


I Come to Life When I'm With You

by MeganRachel09



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Alive Alex & Luke Patterson & Reggie (Julie and The Phantoms), All living, F/M, Gen, Julie is a wrecking ball of talent, Luke is that guy who cannot resist physical contact with the people he loves, Luke sometimes curses when he is angry / super passionate, Luke will throw down for the people he loves, M/M, There is SO MUCH hand holding / hand touching here, and Luke can't handle it, brief depiction of homophobia, brief moment of violence, including hate speech, there is some bad language here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:53:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 48,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27339727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeganRachel09/pseuds/MeganRachel09
Summary: Julie didn’t just lose her mother to cancer; she lost her music as well. It had been a whole year since she sang or even considered playing the piano. Just the thought of it was a reminder of all that she’d lost.But when she snuck out to watch the Battle of the Bands at the Hollywood Ghost Club and stumbled upon a band in crisis, she just knew that the time had come to play again. By stepping in to help out Sunset Curve, she found the one person who could restore her passion for music and help her feel more connected to her mother.Warning: brief mention of homophobia, some strong language and hate speech.
Relationships: Alex & Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 277
Kudos: 639





	1. When one door closes… you bust through the window.

“Good night, _mija_.”

Julie paused on the stairs and sent her dad a nervous smile over her shoulder. All through dinner her foot had been tapping an anxious rhythm beneath the table and she’d been sure he would notice and grill her for it, but he never did. Then, when they were doing the dishes with Carlos just a few minutes ago, she’d nearly broken a plate, simply let it slip through her trembling fingers. Thankfully, she’d been holding it over the sink full of soapy water, so it hadn’t actually shattered, but she was still surprised her dad didn’t seem to suspect anything.

“Night, Papi,” she said.

He smiled softly, accentuating the lines around his tired eyes – Julie felt her heart spasm; the last year had been hard on all of them, but her father was beginning to wear the weight of his grief. There was a quiet sigh as he sank into the couch cushions. Julie hesitated, considering for a moment texting Flynn and bailing, joining her dad in front of the TV and curling up against his side like she used to when she was younger, sandwiched between her parents. But it couldn’t be that way anymore. She could barely handle her own pain; she didn’t think she could share in his.

She turned and fled up the stairs. Carlos came out of the bathroom in his bright green dinosaur pajamas. He watched her as she passed, and she saw the way his eyes narrowed suspiciously as she closed her bedroom door behind her. Her little brother was way more observant than their father these days.

Heart pounding, she leaned against the door and exhaled sharply. Was she really about to do this?

Her phone chimed quietly in her pocket. She knew it was Flynn before she even reached for it.

_FlynniethePooh: Ready for the best night of your life, Jules?_

A soft _whoosh_ and a second message popped up.

_FlynniethePooh: I’m outside, by the way._

She took a deep breath and let her head fall back against the door. Her eye caught a flash of color from the trunk of her mom’s things she’d finally gone through that afternoon. The turquoise leather dress called to her as strongly as it had the first time she’d seen it. Then there was the picture she’d found buried at the bottom. Her mother had worn this dress on stage during a performance with her band. Julie wondered how many times her mom had broken the rules, but she knew she couldn’t ask her father.

With a quick, decisive nod, she looked back down at the phone in her hand, and her fingers flew across the screen.

_Jewels: Give me fifteen minutes._

She walked to the trunk and reached out almost reverently to pull the leather dress out. She was really going to do this. She was really going to sneak out of her house.

Julie changed into the dress quickly and paired it with a black leather vest with a lot of fringe and did a quick cat eye. Thankfully, her hair still looked decent from this morning – they’d watched a movie in gym this afternoon instead of dressing out.

The window was wide and opened quietly, swinging out so that she could easily step out onto the narrow overhang above the back porch. She hadn’t ever snuck out before, but it seemed simple enough to just reach out and hook her hand around the low-hanging tree branch. It would only be about a three foot drop if she simply dangled there for a second. The thing was, when she’d been plotting this in her mind she hadn’t factored in the tight, restricting dress, or considered how she would manage to snack _back_ _in_ later. She sure couldn’t climb back up the damn tree.

Her only hope was that her dad would be sound asleep when she got back and she could creep in through the kitchen door. He really should be. It would be well after midnight, after all.

“When one door closes,” she whispered, remembering something Flynn had told her once, “you bust through the window.”

She took a deep breath and reached for the tree branch.

Flynn was pacing, dancing really, at the end of her neighbor’s driveway when Julie ran, hunched over, heart racing, to the street. Flynn squealed quietly and gripped Julie’s hands tight in her own, pulling her giggling under the streetlight a few houses down.

“Jules, you look amazing!” Flynn said.

“So do you!” Julie said emphatically. It was true. Flynn was wearing a camo print Sherpa jacket over a yellow and green top with black high-waisted athletic pants and bright sneakers. On anyone else, it may not have been a very cohesive outfit, but Flynn had a way of making anything look effortlessly cool.

Flynn beamed at her, and then pulled her into a hug. “I’m so glad you decided to come! Battle of the Bands is going to be _so great_.”

Julie smiled into Flynn’s braids. “Too bad Double Trouble couldn’t compete.”

Flynn gasped and flew back, holding Julie’s shoulders at arm’s length. “Did you just… _finally_ approve our band name?”

Shaking her head, Julie rolled her eyes fondly. She and Flynn weren’t really in a band – Flynn was more of a planner than a performer, and Julie… well, Julie wasn’t really much of anything anymore – but they had always talked about themselves as if they actually were a musical duo.

“Come on. We’re going to be late.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am embarrassingly in love with this show.  
> I live in Louisiana, and we just went through a pretty nasty hurricane and I have been without power for almost five days. Thus, I have started a new fanfiction for a new fandom.  
> I really hope you guys enjoy because I am having fun with it. :)


	2. Nothing is worth putting up with this.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the help of Flynn's cousin, the girls sneak into the Battle of the Bands only to discover a popular band in crisis.
> 
> Trigger warning: homophobia / homophobic hate speech.  
> Trigger warning: violence. 
> 
> Both are brief, but they are there and they could be jarring. (The violence is against the person spitting ignorance).

“Julie! Calm down!” Flynn hissed. They were standing in the dark alley next to the club that was hosting the Battle of the Bands, a weird place called The Hollywood Ghost Club, waiting for Flynn’s cousin, who was one of the bartenders, to let them in the back door.

“But we’re underage,” Julie said, not for the first time, pacing nervously behind Flynn. “This is so illegal.”

Flynn whirled on her, long braids whipping around her shoulders and narrowly avoiding hitting Julie in the face. “Julie, half of the people in there are underage! It’s _Battle of the Bands!_ Most of the participants go to our school!”

It was true. Carrie Wilson had been handing out fliers announcing Dirty Candy’s participation all week, and rumor had it that Sunset Curve was competing as well, though the boys in the band hadn’t done any advertising. Julie personally thought that was a smart move on their part. It didn’t matter who had gotten people to come, as long as people showed up and stuck around to see them. Why wouldn’t they just let Carrie spend her daddy’s money on fliers and posters and keep what little they had for themselves?

“They’re not even carding to get in!” Flynn continued. “Miles said Mr. Covington upped security and is making the bartenders check everyone’s ID at the bar instead.”

“Then why are we sneaking in the back?” Julie whispered.

“Because,” Flynn said, drawing out the word with an eyeroll so dramatic that it almost made Julie’s head ache for her. “It’s a fifteen dollar cover to go in the front, and Miles can sneak us in for free!”

“It just feels so… _bad_ ,” Julie admitted, and felt silly for saying it immediately when the door opened in front of her and Flynn’s older cousin, tall with platinum blond hair and several ear piercings, stood staring out at them, the hazy purple lighting behind him giving him an almost otherworldly glow.

“Oh yeah,” Miles said with a sardonic smirk. “You girls are _real_ bad.”

“Oh shut up, Miles,” Flynn said fiercely, stepping up so she was standing toe-to-toe with her cousin.

“I’m sorry,” he said flatly and shot his hand out to hold the doorframe and block Flynn from entering as he frowned down at her. “Did you want to get in free or would you rather pay thirty dollars at the other door?”

Flynn glared mutely up at him, and Julie let out a shaky breath, trying her best to expel her nerves as she stepped closer.

“Free is good,” Julie said brightly and smiled up at the older boy. “Thanks, Miles.”

Miles smiled at her and stepped aside for her to walk past him. He was technically Flynn’s cousin, but he had been raised by her parents, so he was more like her older brother and, while they picked at each other, Miles really was a nice guy. “Hey, Julie. That’s a cool dress.”

“Thanks.” Julie smiled and looked down at herself, speaking softly. “It was my mom’s.”

She almost thought they couldn’t hear her over the music; someone was already performing, she realized. But when she turned to look at them, the two cousins were exchanging concerned glances. Miles looked up, realized she was watching them, and then quirked an eyebrow at Flynn. “Nice bag. What are you, twelve?”

Flynn gasped and whirled on him, and her silver cat bag bumped against her hip, the glittery purple ears reflecting the club lights brilliantly. “Haven’t you heard of manners?”

“Learned them at your mother’s knee,” Miles deadpanned, then glanced at his watch and sighed. “Look, you guys do whatever you want. Hang out backstage, or out in the crowd. I don’t care either way, and no one will ask you any questions; they’ll just think you’re part of a band. But! If you _do_ get caught, you don’t know me. Got it?”

“Yeah, of course,” Julie said, looking up at him with wide eyes.

“I _wish_ I didn’t know you,” Flynn mumbled, but Julie saw the smile she was trying to hide, and it was obvious that Miles did too because he shoved her playfully before he walked away.

“What do you want to do?” Julie asked Flynn, raising her voice some when the music suddenly grew louder as a new band took the stage.

Flynn shrugged and led her down the hallway after Miles. If they turned left, they would end up behind the big, lit-up stage where all the bands who hadn’t played yet were gathered. If they stayed straight, they’d end up squished in the crowd. Julie looked at Flynn. Flynn looked at Julie.

“Backstage,” they said in unison.

Flynn took her hand and, giggling, they took off to the left.

It was even louder backstage, and almost just as cramped, but the energy was different surrounded by musicians rather than fans. It was equally electric, but Julie felt more at home here, looking around at all the performers tuning their instruments and nervously rehearsing their songs. It felt familiar. She may not have performed, hadn’t even so much as sung or touched a piano, since her mother died a year ago, but she knew that feeling of nervous excitement. It was still, somehow, a part of her. Wide-eyed, a bit envious, she looked around, and tried to drink it all in.

Flynn’s fingernails dug into the back of Julie’s hand, making her hiss in pain. “ _What_?”

Flynn yanked her to the side, and behind a heavy deep blue curtain. “Dirty Candy alert,” she breathed urgently. Sure enough, now that Flynn mentioned it, Julie could hear Carrie Wilson’s high-pitched voice rehearsing on the other side of the thick drape.

_Some might say I sound conceited  
They don't get the shine that I get  
Some get jealous, they can't help it  
They wish they were me_

Julie crouched down behind the curtain even though it was unnecessary. There was no way that Carrie could see them now, but it was better to be safe than sorry. They may have been friends once, best friends, the three of them, but it had been years since Carrie had had a kind word for either Julie or Flynn and Julie wasn’t really in the mood to be mocked tonight.

“What are you doing?”

Julie and Flynn both jumped and spun around to stare, shocked, at the boy standing behind them. He was tall and thin, with dark hair pushed back and was wearing a black leather jacket over a red flannel. His black ripped skinny jeans were tucked into a pair of scuffed black combat boots. Even if he wasn’t wearing the same thing he wore every day, Julie would have recognized him immediately. Reggie and all the boys in Sunset Curve may have been a year older and mostly kept to themselves, but everyone knew them, and loved their music.

“Um…” Flynn faltered, staring up at him.

_I'm stealing all the attention  
Don't get me started on mentions, yeah_

Julie lunged at Reggie when he started to question them again, covering his mouth to stop him from drawing more attention when she heard Carrie’s voice grow louder, as if her energetic dancing was bringing her closer and closer to their hiding spot. His eyes went wide as he stared at her. Cringing at her own brashness, she drew her hand away but still shushed him.

“We’re hiding from Carrie Wilson,” she whispered.

Understanding shone in his gentle brown eyes – Carrie was well known for being a mean girl – and he smiled.

“Got it,” he mouthed back, then turned and walked away, gesturing for them to follow him.

Julie looked at Flynn, who shrugged, and then followed Reggie around a corner and away from Carrie. They stopped when they turned the corner to find the rest of Sunset Curve gathered in a relatively dark, private area. There was Alex in his usual black joggers and jean jacket, his blond hair parted down the middle and framing his face, and Bobby in a simple black t-shirt and jeans, his dark hair hanging loose around his face, and finally Luke Patterson in a pair of jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt beneath a sweatshirt he had clearly cut the sleeves off of as well to show off his muscular arms. They were all attractive, but Luke was on a whole other level, and Julie suspected his vendetta against sleeves was his way of showing that he knew it.

But it wasn’t their presence that made her halt in her tracks. They were fighting. Not just arguing like bandmates and best friends sometimes did, but truly fighting. Alex looked fearful and was on the verge of tears, and Luke stood between him and Bobby with his hands balled into fists at his sides, looking angrier than Julie had ever seen anyone look. Bobby was clearly angry as well, but he didn’t look as ready to fight as Luke was. He looked almost as afraid as Alex, really. Reggie, who had frozen just a few steps ahead of Julie, suddenly jumped to action and shouldered his way between Luke and Bobby so that Bobby was forced to stumble back several steps to make room.

“What’s going on?” he demanded, looking from Bobby to Luke to Alex.

“You’re an asshole, Bobby! You’re a fucking ignorant creep and I’ll kick your ass!” Luke lunged around Reggie to get to Bobby, but Reggie was surprisingly quick and unafraid of Luke as he pivoted to the side and put both of his hands roughly on Luke’s chest to shove him back.

“Bring it, Patterson,” Bobby said, looking much braver now that Reggie was here to hold Luke back.

“Luke, stop!” Alex said weakly, eyes downcast. He put a hand on Luke’s shoulder. Julie was surprised when Luke visibly deflated. His rage had seemed overwhelming, implacable. “Please, just calm down. It’s not worth it.”

“Yes, it is, Alex,” Luke mumbled, not looking away from Bobby. “He can’t say shit like that.”

“No, he’s right. It’s not worth it,” Bobby said with a scowl. “Nothing’s worth putting up with this. I didn’t sign on to play with a faggot.”

Luke lunged again, and Reggie was so shocked at what Bobby had just said that he didn’t even try to stop him. Luke got in one good punch to the jaw that snapped Bobby’s head back painfully and knocked him to the ground. Alex grabbed Luke from behind, one hand arching over his shoulder and the other under his opposite armpit, and dragged him, struggling, back as he tried desperately to fall on top of the other boy and pummel him.

Luke was shouting. Julie couldn’t make out a single word he said, but she felt his rage and figured about half of what he was saying was profanity.

Bobby struggled to his feet and Alex swung Luke around and shouldered him back so that Alex was between Luke and Bobby now, and it was Reggie’s turn to jump protectively in front of Alex.

“Forget you guys,” Bobby said, and spat blood at Alex’s feet. “Good luck finding a replacement in an hour. Without me, you’re done, assholes.”

Julie and Flynn were both frozen as Bobby stalked past them, avoiding eye contact. Flynn turned to look at her with wide eyes. They had never witnessed a true fight before, much less one that led to the break up of a promising band.

There was a loud curse and Julie looked over in time to see Luke kick a heavy wooden trunk. With a thud, it jumped a few inches to the side. She figured it had to have hurt, but Luke was so angry it didn’t seem to have phased him.

Alex sniffled, and Luke wheeled around, eyes wide and uncomfortable. If it wasn’t so horrible what had just happened, Julie might have found it comical. Luke was perfectly fine beating up his homophobic band member, but not comforting his crying friend. Reggie looked slightly less uncomfortable as he slid his arm around Alex’s shoulders, but he nevertheless seemed at a loss for words.

Julie and Flynn shared another questioning glance, uncertain if they should involve themselves or walk away and pretend they hadn’t witnessed anything. Before they could make up their minds, Luke suddenly noticed them.

“What are you doing here?” he said harshly, stomping forward as if trying to intimidate them into running away. Even without the actual threat present, it seemed that Luke was still wildly protective of his friends.

Reggie leapt forward and placed a placating hand on Luke’s shoulder. “Chill, man. I brought them.”

“Why?” Luke demanded, whirling on him.

Reggie didn’t bat an eye at Luke’s aggressive stance, which told Julie all she needed to know about Luke Patterson. He was quick to defend a friend, but he would never turn on one. “Because I didn’t know what was about to go down, and they were trying to avoid Carrie Wilson.”

“I thought she was your friend,” Luke said, glaring at Julie and Flynn. “Why are you avoiding her?”

Julie reeled back like she’d been slapped, but Flynn surged forward looking almost as ready to fight as Luke had been just moments ago. “ _Carrie_ is not our _friend_. If anything she’s our _nemesis_.”

“But you’re all in that stupid fancy music program together,” Luke argued.

“Yeah? And?” Flynn demanded, making a quick motion with her hand that clearly meant _come on, explain yourself, I dare you_.

“I just thought you were friends, okay?” Luke said, and Julie was surprised yet again when he backed down almost as if he was afraid of a girl who was half his size.

“Maybe don’t worry so much about who we are and aren’t friends with,” Julie said softly, stepping up next to Flynn. “And worry about your own friend.”

Luke and Reggie both turned around at that to see that Alex was still crying though he was clearly trying desperately to calm himself. Luke bounded over to him, discomfort with tears be damned, and pulled Alex into a firm hug.

“Don’t listen to him, bro,” he said, a rough edge to his normally smooth voice. “You’re the sickest drummer and the coolest friend around.”

“He’s right, and I’m not even offended by it,” Reggie said, and he wrapped his arms around both of them.

Alex was visibly comforted by his friends’ touch. He buried his face in Luke’s shoulder for a second, and Julie realized with a smile that he was wiping his tears on his friend’s arm. When he looked up, he met her eyes, and there was still fear in them.

“I’m not even fully out,” Alex whispered, and Julie realized why he still seemed so terrified. Maybe Bobby wouldn’t say anything yet, not when the threat of Luke beating him up was so fresh in his mind, but there were two random girls standing in the room.

“We won’t say anything,” Julie said, and surprised even herself by stepping up to the three boys and taking Alex’s hand in hers and linking their fingers together. She felt an odd shock when they made contact, felt some sort of connection to him deep in her heart. Somehow, though she hadn’t even had a full conversation with him yet, she knew she would come to love this boy like a brother. From his wide-eyed stare, she suspected he felt something similar. “Luke is right. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are so cool, and so talented, and you shouldn’t ever let anyone make you feel anything different.”

“Yeah, don’t worry,” Flynn said from a few feet away. “Your secret is safe with us until you don’t need it to be.”

“Maybe even then,” Julie added.

“Yeah, even then,” Flynn allowed with a tilt of her head.

For a very long time, no one said anything. The boys all stared at the girls, and Julie stared at Alex, trying to silently reassure him.

Finally, he smiled shakily. “Thank you,” he breathed.

And just like that, the tension was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys! Hope you enjoyed this chapter! It's a pretty... dramatic intro to the boys, I'd say.  
> Don't you just love a protective Luke who just punches his bandmate in the face and then immediately cowers away from a girl half his size? Because I do.  
> Just as a note: I have no plans for a repeat of the homophobia or the violence in later chapters.


	3. Enjoy the show.

“Bobby’s right, though,” Luke groaned, flopping down in the worn chair in the corner. “Without him we can’t play.”

“Why not?” Julie asked. Surely Bobby wasn’t the creative genius behind their music. Not that she was naïve enough to think that ignorant, homophobic people couldn’t make entertaining content. It was just that she knew enough about Sunset Curve to know that Luke was the one who wrote the songs, from the lyrics to the melody to the instrumentals.

“Each group has to have at least four members,” Alex told her miserably. He was still clutching her hand, and maybe it was weird since they didn’t really know each other, but neither of them was in a hurry to separate.

“Well that’s a stupid rule,” Flynn grumbled. “Everyone knows Carrie’s the only one who actually sings in Dirty Candy. They’re not even a band; it’s Carrie singing over a pre-recorded track and dancing with her backup dancers, and they’re still competing.”

“Yeah, but they’re still technically signed up as a group of five,” Reggie pointed out.

“Bet her daddy bribed Covington to allow it,” Luke complained.

“He probably didn’t even need to. Caleb Covington is all about the glitz and the glam,” Alex said. “Dirty Candy is right up his alley.”

“Yeah, I was kind of surprised you guys even entered,” Flynn admitted. “This is less about talent and more about showmanship.”

“Yeah, well,” Luke shrugged and scowled up at the ceiling. “There’s a cash prize and we’re strapped. God, I can’t believe we wasted all this time and effort on this only for Bobby to ruin everything!”

Reggie looked over at Luke, frowning. “Hey, think positive. We still have an hour.”

Alex let go of Julie’s hand to wheel on Reggie. “An hour? To find a replacement, teach them a brand new song, and gel with them? Positivity is a beautiful thing, Reginald, but right now we need to face reality! We’re out of this competition.”

“Oh?” Said a voice from behind them. The five of them all whirled to face the newcomer, a tall, thin man in a flashy velvet purple suit. “And I was so looking forward to seeing the boys of Sunset Curve on my stage. I’ve heard only good things about you.”

“Mr. Covington.” Luke stood up quickly. Alex and Reggie both jumped to attention as well, standing tall on either side of Luke.

“Problems, boys?” Mr. Covington asked with a wicked smile.

Alex opened his mouth, but Luke beat him to it.

“No! No! No problems!” he said quickly. “We’re just… just chilling before our turn!”

Mr. Covington looked at him for a long, tense moment. Then, he smiled what was quite possibly the fakest show smile Julie had ever seen. “Good. It would be such a pity if you squandered this opportunity, boys. There are a lot of important people here tonight and I would hate for your career to be ruined before it even gets going.”

“Don’t you worry about us, Mr. Covington,” Luke said with an air of great confidence. “We’ll rock that crowd.”

“See that you do, boys.” Mr. Covington smiled, that awful fake smile again, and made a point of looking around the room. “Say, where’s the fourth boy?”

“We replaced him,” Luke said quickly. “He wasn’t working out.”

“Hmm. Well, I’m certainly intrigued,” Mr. Covington said. “I look forward to seeing what you’re able to pull off tonight. I’ll let everyone know to watch for your performance.”

With that, he turned and swept from the room, pausing to wink back at the group of them. “Enjoy the show, ladies.”

As soon as he was gone, Luke collapsed in the chair again with another deep groan.

“Luke!” Alex hissed. “What did you just do?”

Luke covered his face in his hands and groaned loudly into his palms. “I don’t know!”

“You told him we were competing!” Alex continued, his voice rising. “You told him we replaced Bobby! We didn’t replace Bobby! Bobby left the band! Ten minutes ago!”

“I _know_ , Alex!” Luke said.

“Hey, maybe it’ll be okay!” Reggie said hopefully. “Mr. Covington said there are a lot of important people out there! Even if we go out there and get disqualified, at least we’ll show our faces! People will know who we are! Important people! Music execs, maybe!”

“ _How am I friends with such an optimist?_ ” Alex groaned dramatically, his fists clenched at his sides and his face angled up to the ceiling. He turned to glare at Luke. “And an _idiot_.”

“Variety, my dude,” Reggie said happily, clapping him on the shoulder.

“I mean, he could be right,” Luke said thoughtfully. “So we don’t win the cash prize; we’ll live. At least we play. At least we connect!”

“Yeah,” Alex said hesitantly. “I guess. Maybe.”

“I wish it were that easy,” said a boy maybe a little older than them. He stepped into the room just as Mr. Covington had, but while everything about Mr. Covington was clearly all for show, everything about this boy seemed incredibly genuine. He was wearing a nice button-down shirt and a suit jacket over a pair of black shorts and casual sneakers.

“Who are _you_?” Luke said, sounding exasperated, like he didn’t understand why so many people kept stumbling across them when he had clearly gone out of his way to find a secluded spot.

“Sorry. I’m Willie,” he said, shoving his long, flowy hair over his shoulders. “I’m Covington’s nephew.”

“I’m Reggie!” Reggie sent him a friendly wave and then gestured around the room making introductions. “That’s Luke, and that’s Alex. We’re Sunset Curve. Tell your friends. And these are our new friends Julie and Flynn.”

“Nice to meet you,” Willie said. His gaze lingered on Alex for a moment, who seemed frozen in place.

“Hey, Willie. What do you mean it’s not that easy?” Flynn said. “What’s not that easy?”

“Oh.” He turned to her with what looked like a significant deal of effort. “Well, there’s tons of security here tonight and my uncle has given everyone strict instructions. They won’t let you play.”

“What do you mean?” Luke demanded, sitting up straighter in the chair.

“There’s security going over checklists before you even get to the stage. You need a fourth member or they won’t let you out there,” Willie said sadly. “I’m really sorry, guys. I’m a big fan.”

He turned and left the room, but not before he stole another glance at Alex, who was still staring at him.

“ _Damn it!_ ” Luke groaned.

Alex slumped against the wall, but Julie couldn’t tell if it was the crushing disappointment or the very obvious and quickly developing crush that had him weak. Even Reggie looked downtrodden as he stood next to Flynn and stared after Willie’s retreating back.

“This sucks,” Flynn said sadly. “I’m sorry, guys. If only there was someone who could stand in for you guys.”

She said the last bit thoughtfully and Julie knew it probably went right over the guys’ heads, but Julie caught the very subtle lift in her voice that implied that she had just the person in mind.

In that moment, looking at these three stupidly talented guys who were just moments away from having their dreams dashed unless someone did something about it, she knew exactly what she had to do. And she was surprised to find that for the first time in a year, she _wanted_ it.

“I’ll do it,” she said softly.

Everyone turned to stare at her. Flynn’s mouth dropped open and her eyes practically bugged out of her head. Even though she’d hinted at it, she clearly hadn’t expected Julie to take the bait.

“What?” Luke said, his eyebrows drawing together.

“I’ll stand in as your fourth,” she said. Her heart was pounding wildly, her blood racing in her veins, but her voice was steady.

“Oh, yes!” Reggie shouted, leaping forward to wrap her in a crushing hug. “You’re amazing!”

“You have a killer voice!” Alex enthused, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet like he was seconds away from breaking into a dance. “And don’t you play piano? I remember you competed in the talent show last year.”

She had competed in the talent show. So had Carrie, and so had they. By the narrowest margin, Sunset Curve had actually beaten Carrie, but that was before the glam and the backup dancers and the wasting of her father’s money. They would need to pull out all the stops to beat her tonight.

“I do.” Julie hesitated, and cleared her throat. “I play the piano.”

“We can make it work! Luke, didn’t you originally write _Free_ with a piano piece in it?” Reggie called out.

Luke was still standing off to the side frowning thoughtfully. “Yeah, I did.”

And wasn’t that strange, Julie thought. She’d never known Sunset Curve to play a song with a piano part. It was all guitars and drums and bass and Luke’s amazing vocals all the time.

“But do you even perform anymore?” Luke said bluntly, looking right at her. It wasn’t exactly a secret that Julie was days away from being kicked out of the music program at school because she couldn’t perform.

Julie faltered under his gaze. “I…”

“You don’t really have any other options, dude,” Flynn said, stepping forward and glaring at Luke. “She’s going to kill it.”

And somehow Julie knew Flynn was right. She didn’t know how they managed it, and she didn’t know what it was, but there was something about these three boys that made her feel like…well, like she could do anything. At least, she could get up on that stage and rock that crowd with them.

“I’m just saying. If you get up there and freeze, that’s as bad as us not competing at all,” Luke told her.

“Lucas!” Alex hissed.

“Not cool, man!” Reggie said loudly, looking offended on Julie’s behalf.

“I can do this,” Julie said confidently, because she knew that she could. “Now, do you have the song written down or are you just going to play it for me first?”

Luke blinked at her, surprised, but then he knelt down next to the guitar case at his feet and opened it to pull out a heavily used bound notebook. He flipped through it quickly, shooting her suspicious glances until he came to a stop on one of the last pages. He held the book out to her. “Here.”

She took it from him and read over the lyrics to a song she hadn’t heard them play before. When she finished reading the words – they were good, and that wasn’t surprising – she flipped the page curiously and was surprised to see that he had sketched out what looked to be a very soft, sweet piano composition layered on top of the first verse.

“If you do this, you’re playing the intro on your own,” he warned her. The frown on his face looked surprisingly concerned rather than suspicious. “Think you can handle it?”

She looked up at him and squared her shoulders defensively. She hadn’t realized how close he was standing – he must have moved closer to watch her reaction as she read his song – but she found herself having to crane her neck to look up at him.

“I can do it,” she said softly. “I know I can.”

“Awesome!” Reggie shouted and she tore her gaze from Luke to see that Reggie and Alex were jumping around excitedly.

“Come on! Let’s rehearse it!” Alex called.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for reading and for all of your comments! I'm so excited to be sharing this story with everyone! :)   
> Sooooo it's about to go down Battle of the Bands style!   
> Predictions? Hopes? Dreams? Let me know what you think!


	4. Don't worry, we're going to be legends.

Flynn squeezed Julie’s hand as they waited for Sunset Curve to be announced. Dirty Candy was just wrapping up their admittedly entertaining (if a bit shallow) performance. Julie was feeling that heart clenching anxiety that had started after her mom died, the palpable grief and panic that had made it impossible for her to sing for the past year. It hadn’t happened when she was rehearsing with the boys, which she had thought was a good sign. But now, waiting, knowing that she was going to be up there in front of hundreds of people, it was sudden and all but overwhelming.

“You’re going to be great, Julie,” Flynn hissed in her ear as the backstage attendant called for her to head out on stage.

She smiled weakly at Flynn and nodded. She had been so sure of herself less than an hour ago, so confident that she could do this, that she could help these boys. Now, though, she was terrified that she would freeze up just like Luke had said she might.

Hesitantly, she stepped up, climbed the steps. The boys were already there, waiting at the curtain, watching as Carrie and her dancers blew kisses and pranced off the stage in the opposite direction.

Luke turned when she approached, and he smiled encouragingly and reached out to grip her shoulder, ducking his head to put them eye-to-eye. “You’re gonna crush it!”

He had changed his tune about two verses into their first run-through of the song and was now about as excited to perform with her as Alex and Reggie were. She smiled at him and nodded as the attendant waved her through.

It was Reggie’s idea for her to go up on stage alone, to start the song out alone since it was, after all, a keyboard solo. At first, she had been all for it, egged on by their enthusiasm.

The boys would sneak on stage in the dark with the spotlight on her, while she was entrancing the crowd with her voice and when the music kicked up, so would the lights and there they would be to wow the crowd.

“How’s that for showmanship, Covington?” Flynn had laughed at Reggie’s imitation of a mindblown crowd.

It had sounded like a good idea at the time. Now, though?

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stage SUNSET CUUUUUUURVE!” Caleb Covington’s voice reverberated through the club as he announced their entrance, drawing out the band name dramatically.

Luke squeezed her shoulders, and let her go.

She looked back as she stepped out alone. Luke smiled at her and rubbed his hands together in anticipation, Flynn gave her a thumbs up, Reggie was bouncing up and down with a huge grin on his face, and Alex was twirling his drumsticks around his fingers, nodding at her. She didn’t want to let them down.

Slowly, probably too slowly, she made her way to the keyboard in the front left corner of the stage. The spotlight hit her, tight and bright and hot, as she took a seat. She couldn’t see the crowd anymore as she blinked out into the white light, but she could feel their presence, and she could definitely hear them.

She took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. Then, she took another one.

“You got this!” Luke’s voice, just an encouraging hiss, just barely reached her ears.

It was just enough. She closed her eyes, and began to play.

_Hearts on fire_

_We’re no liars_

_So we say what we wanna say_

_I’m awakened_

_No more fakin_

_So we push all our fears away_

On a deep breath, she opened her eyes. She couldn’t see them, but could somehow feel that the boys were with her now, had taken their places. Bolstered by their presence and determined not to let them down, she started to play faster, to sing faster.

_Don’t know if I’ll make it cause I’m falling under_

_Close my eyes and feel my chest beating like thunder_

_I wanna fly_

_Come alive_

_Watch me shine_

Her voice rose steadily until she was belting the notes.

The lights flashed and the spotlight fell off of her just as the boys began to play. The effect on the crowd was instant and electric. People began to scream and she could see them now, could see them dancing and jumping and _feeling_ as she stood from the little stool and left the keyboard to dance around Reggie.

Luke was singing, and his voice was good and strong and it did what she had always known it could do, what it had always done to her each time they had played at a school event. It grabbed people. It drew them in.

She turned to the crowd, leaning toward them as she sang into the microphone. Behind her, Reggie danced his way over to Luke, sang his backing vocals into the same mic as Luke harmonized with her. She watched, smiling, still singing, as Luke turned from his mic stand once his lines were done, and jumped up onto the elevated stand that held Alex’s drum kit, bounced with him, interacted about as well as was possible over the snare drum.

When he jumped down and ran back to his mic stand to sing his solo, Julie turned back to Reggie. He grinned at her and turned his back to her. She shook her head and leaned back, leaned her weight on him as he clearly intended, and belted out a note to mingle with Luke’s voice as he played to the crowd.

He was looking at her, smiling, clearly enjoying her take on his song. She smiled back and danced across the stage to him.

 _I got a spark in me_ , she sang, and then held out her mic to him.

He ducked quickly, moved away from his microphone to lean down and sing into hers, his fingers slowing over the neck of his guitar as the song quieted to show their voices.

 _I got a spark in me,_ he repeated.

 _And you’re a part of me,_ she sang.

 _And you’re a part of me,_ he repeated.

Instead of moving the mic back and forth between them, Julie simply leaned in closer so they were sharing space as they moved center stage.

 _Now til eternity_ , she sang.

 _Now til eternity_ , he echoed.

They really were very close, maybe two inches apart as they sang into the same microphone. He was smiling, clearly loving the experience as much as she was, and his gaze was hot and intense on hers. She smiled back at him just before they belted out their last line together.

 _Been so long and now we’re finally free_.

They broke apart then, with Luke returning to his own mic stand and Julie staying center stage with a tambourine in hand as the boys all sang one last refrain together. Julie, instead of joining them in the refrain, allowed herself to simply feel the music, belting out high, powerful notes one after another until, as the music slowed, she let out a last few, soft ad-libs just as the crowd erupted in applause.

She turned to look at the boys, half expecting Luke to be annoyed with her for changing up his song at the end there, but he was staring at her, grinning. He let his guitar hang by the strap on his shoulder, the neck just inches from the ground as Alex jumped down from behind his drums and they came up to join her center stage.

On her right, Reggie grabbed her hand, his bass hanging as low as Luke’s guitar. Luke took her other hand, already clasping hands with Alex, and together the four of them took a bow to raucous applause before they ran off the stage, hands still linked.

Flynn was on her the second they made it to the bottom of the steps backstage, arms around her neck and twirling with her so that Reggie and Luke had no choice but to let go of her hands and stand back and watch. Julie laughed as Flynn shouted excited nonsense in her ear, and finally broke free of her arms.

“Flynn! You’re gonna bust my eardrums!” she protested, but her face hurt from smiling so wide.

“That was so good!” Flynn shouted. “Oh my God, the crowd loved you guys way more than they loved Dirty Candy! You should have seen the death glare you were getting from Carrie! That was so epic! Julie, you’re my hero!”

“Mine too!” Reggie exclaimed, throwing his arms around both of them and spinning with them.

“She’s right,” Alex said, standing off to the side with a huge, elated grin. He nodded further backstage. “Look how mad she is. She knows we beat her.”

Julie broke free from Flynn and Reggie who continued jumping and spinning and shouting excitedly and turned to see what Alex was looking at. There, about thirty feet away, stood Carrie Wilson, her clear pink plastic jacket reflecting the light. And she was glowering at them.

Turning her back on Carrie, Julie jumped at Alex and threw her arms around his neck. Giggling like fools, they began to jump and spin, mirroring Reggie and Flynn until Reggie ran into Alex and all four of them fell in a tangle of laughing limbs.

“Hey,” Julie gasped, looking around. “Where did Luke go?”

“Probably putting his guitar away,” Alex told her. “He’s crazy about that thing, always puts it in its case when he’s not using it.”

“Who cares!” Reggie shouted, making no move to extricate himself from the rest of them. “We’re going to be all anyone’s talking about!”

Luke found them a few minutes later, still a mass of limbs on the floor right where he had left them. Julie saw that Alex was right; he was carrying a hard case in one hand now rather than his electric slung over his shoulder. When he saw them, he smirked and shook his head until Reggie noticed him and grabbed his ankle to pull him down on top of them all.

It took some convincing, but after a couple more bands, Reggie and Alex got Luke to leave his case with a security attendant who swore up and down not to let it out of his sight. The five of them made their way out into the crowd to find a spot where they could watch the rest of the bands compete. There were only five more bands left and while they were all good Julie agreed with Luke when he said that none of them connected with each other or the crowd the way Sunset Curve had.

They had only been out in the crowd for a few minutes when people started to notice them. It was mostly girls who came up to them, asking for autographs and pictures from the boys. Most of them, Julie noticed, crowded in a little closer to the boys than was strictly necessary, and a few were so bold as to touch Luke’s exposed biceps.

If she thought at first that he enjoyed the attention, she was sorely mistaken. After maybe his third time being felt up, she noticed that Luke started carefully positioning himself so that Julie was between him and the bolder of their new fans. She found it amusing at first, that he was using her as a buffer, but then she realized that all three of them were acting as buffers between her and every guy who asked for a picture. It was embarrassing and a bit scary to think that a bunch of strange guys, most of them significantly older than her, might have tried to put their hands on her the way these girls tried to put theirs on Luke. Still, with the boys of Sunset Curve around, even though Julie barely even knew them, she knew she had nothing to worry about.

It was Reggie who actually enjoyed all the attention he was getting from the ladies. Julie noticed that they didn’t touch him as openly as they tried to touch Luke – probably because Reggie left so much less skin exposed – but he would lean into their touch, throw his arm around them and grin just as cheekily as his fans.

Several times, she caught Flynn’s eye and the two of them burst into giggles at the boys’ reactions.

Alex, like Luke, tried to avoid the girls who wanted to flirt with him, but Julie wasn’t surprised at that one. Willie, the guy who had told them just how strict Mr. Covington was about the rule that only groups of four or more could compete, found them and took a picture with the group. It didn’t escape Julie’s notice that he chose to stand next to Alex, nor did it escape her that Alex grew especially tongue tied around him again. She caught Luke’s eye and they both had to look away before they laughed and embarrassed Alex even more.

“This is the last band,” Willie shouted when it was almost midnight, leaning across Alex so they all could hear him. “Caleb will announce the winner in about fifteen minutes.”

“We better head backstage,” Luke said.

“Okay,” Reggie sighed, looking very put out to be leaving his admirers behind.

Julie grabbed Flynn’s hand so they wouldn’t be separated by the crowd and was surprised when she felt Luke’s hand slip into her other hand. She noticed that he grabbed Reggie too, though, so she figured he was only trying to ensure that they all stuck together.

“Wait,” Julie called, turning to look behind her. “Alex!”

“He’ll be alright,” Luke said, and his face was shockingly close to hers when she turned back to him. Her step faltered briefly before he pulled her along.

Julie looked back again and saw that Alex was still talking to Willie. She smiled, realizing that Luke was trying to give them a minute alone. Maybe it was unfair of her, but she hadn’t expected him to be such a caring, thoughtful guy.

He was right, though; Alex found them a few minutes after they made it backstage. His cheeks were a bit pink, but he looked pleased with himself.

“Where’s Willie?” Reggie asked.

“He had something to do,” Alex said. “He’s going to try to meet up with us after the winner is announced.”

“How’s he going to find us again?” Julie wondered. “It’s packed out there; I’m surprised he tracked us down the first time.”

Alex’s cheeks went pinker still, and his tone was a bit _too_ nonchalant when he said, “He’s going to text me to see where we are.”

Julie grinned and she heard Flynn giggling in her ear. Reggie ruffled Alex’s hair, making a big deal of _his baby growing up_ , and Luke threw his arm over Alex’s shoulders and practically fell into him.

“Nice,” Luke said loudly, seeming unfazed when Alex shoved him away none-too-gently.

Julie watched them and felt a surge of affection for these three boys.

The last band finished their song to a decent round of applause from the crowd, and a current pop song began to play as Julie saw them, a group of five college-age boys, traipse off the stage. She felt butterflies in her stomach and figured that the boys were feeling a similar sort of nerves now as she and Flynn found themselves engulfed in a five-person hug while they waited for Mr. Covington to take the stage and end their suffering.

Over Alex’s shoulder, she caught a glimpse of Carrie watching them with a distasteful frown. She turned her head and caught Luke watching her. He smiled. The butterflies kicked it up a notch. She smiled back.

They pulled out of their group hug when Mr. Covington took the stage. He started off with a self-deprecating joke about how the audience clearly didn’t want to see him up there, but their favorite group of the night. Julie rolled her eyes. He had been perfectly pleasant when he had come across them backstage before their performance, before Julie had decided to join them, but there was just something so off about him. She could tell by Luke’s frown as he stared out at Mr. Covington that he felt it too.

“So, without any further delay,” Mr. Covington said, his voice booming loud and clear and theatrical, through his microphone, “the winner of Battle of the Bands and one thousand dollars…”

He paused, took a deep breath, looked at the card in his hand as if he didn’t already know, drew out the pause as long as he possibly could. Julie found herself holding her breath. Her hands, one in Reggie’s, the other in Flynn’s, were both going numb.

“DIRTY CANDY!”

Julie’s breath huffed out in a whoosh. She was disappointed, but she couldn’t honestly say she was surprised.

There was a shrill shriek of obviously fake surprise when he announced the winner, and Julie stumbled a bit when Carrie bumped into her, clearly intentionally, and ran out onto the stage. Alex caught her by the elbow and steadied her as, jumping and squealing, the girls of Dirty Candy accepted a comically large check from Mr. Covington.

“This is rigged!” Flynn shouted, balling her hands into fists. “You guys were the fan favorites by far!”

“Yeah, well…” Luke sighed, but Julie thought he seemed surprisingly calm. “Even though we didn’t win the check, it’s still exposure. We got our names out there and maybe picked up a few new fans.”

“ _And_ ,” Reggie said, draping an arm over Flynn and the other over Julie, “a couple new friends, too.”

Alex shook his head like Reggie was just so embarrassing, and Luke laughed and gave him a playful shove that made Reggie (and therefore Julie and Flynn) stumble. Julie, though, craned her neck to smile up at him.

“Oh, come _on_ , guys!” Flynn raged. “You should be mad! You were robbed!”

“Flynn, they’re right. Even without the check, we still know we won,” Julie said, though she did understand where Flynn was coming from. “But yeah, I bet that check doesn’t even cover half of what her daddy paid for it.”

Behind her, she heard Luke laugh. Reggie’s arm tightened around her shoulders and pulled her in closer, and Alex grinned at her.

“Okay, you’re right… But it’s still not fair,” Flynn grumbled, and Julie smiled and shook her head at her.

“Don’t worry,” Luke said, leaning in in that way he sometimes did where he got his face really, really close so that his point simply couldn’t be missed. Julie saw Flynn’s eyes widen and glaze over a bit – yeah he really was a cute guy – and hid a smile. “We’re going to be legends.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, I love this silly group of kids.  
> I also love all of you! Thanks so much for reading :)   
> Let me know what you thought of this chapter, and what you think/hope is coming!


	5. You brought the music back.

Julie and Flynn followed the boys out of the club at around 1:30. Julie wasn’t used to staying up so late, but she was on such an adrenaline high after their killer performance and near win that she knew she wouldn’t fall asleep for hours even if she left right after the performance. Besides, so many people came up to talk to them that she wasn’t sure she would even have been able to make it to the door if the boys hadn’t parted the crowd.

They were in surprisingly high spirits despite their loss to Dirty Candy of all people. Luke was smiling as he listened to Reggie rambling about what their next big move could be. He reached a low brick wall and heaved himself up to sit on top of it, his feet dangling several inches from the ground. Without even pausing in his rambling, Reggie jumped up next to him. Alex simply leaned next to Luke, one elbow on top of the wall near Luke’s knee, and crossed his legs at the ankles, the picture of cool. His drums were all packed up and stacked at his feet as he waited for his ride.

Despite their awesome time tonight, and the amazing chemistry they had all shared on stage, Julie didn’t know if she was completely welcome in their circle. She didn’t think they would tell her to go away if she tried to join them, but neither did they invite her over. Even then, she wasn’t sure if they were deliberately leaving her out or just were so used to it being the three of them – Bobby had always been a bit on the outside himself – that they didn’t think to include her.

Back in the club, there had been no question of her inclusion, but standing outside after everything was all said and done? It just felt so different.

She turned to Flynn and yawned quietly. “Are we waiting for Miles or just heading out?”

Flynn hummed thoughtfully and pulled her phone out of her back pocket. “Not sure when he gets off. Let me check.”

They were in a pretty safe neighborhood and they didn’t live far away, so Julie wasn’t too afraid to walk home with her, but it would still be more comforting to have Flynn’s older cousin with them.

“No, he’s got to stick around for at least another hour,” Flynn said, reading his quick response. She made a face. “And he’s trying to pick up a girl. Ew. I didn’t need to know that. He also says that you killed it up there.”

Julie laughed quietly and, out of the corner of her eye, saw Luke turn his head toward her. She was about to go talk to him, to tell the boys goodnight, when the door opened behind her and she heard a familiar, grating high-pitched giggle.

“Oh, look, girls. It looks like a couple of toddlers wandered out of daycare again,” Carrie said, then paused and laughed again, high and mocking. “Oops, no, just Julie and Flynn.”

“Shut _up_ , Carrie. Julie’s two months older than you,” Flynn fired back immediately, whipping around so quickly that Julie wondered if she had known this was coming. “Besides, that doesn’t even make sense. What _daycare_ runs in the middle of the night?”

“Did you hear something, girls? I can’t really make it out over the sound of Julie choking yet again.” Carrie, still in her ridiculous white shorts and tank with the stupid clear pink plastic jacket on top, stepped closer so that Julie could have snatched the candy-pink wig off her head if she wanted to. “Nice try, but you’ll never upstage me.”

“Carrie, we both know that we had it in the bag,” Julie said, surprising herself with how calm she was. “Next time we compete against each other, you better hope it’s another venue where your daddy can buy your victory.”

A sleek black limousine pulled up at that very moment and the window rolled down to reveal Trevor Wilson, Carrie’s dad and a washed up rock star himself. “You girls ready?”

“Daddy! We won!” Carrie said, brushing off the alarm at Julie’s confidence and pushing past Julie to show her father the oversized check Mr. Covington had handed her.

“Of course you did, honey.” He didn’t even pretend to look impressed as she and her backup dancers climbed in next to him. His eyes darted back to the curb, saw Julie and Flynn standing there, and widened in surprise. “Julie! Flynn! It’s been a while! You girls need a ride home?”

“No thanks, Mr. Wilson,” Julie and Flynn said in tandem.

“Yeah, Daddy, they’re fine,” Carrie said and turned to them with a false, too-sweet smile. “See you girls at school Monday. Oh, and nice try tonight, boys! Maybe next time!”

Julie looked over her shoulder to see that Luke, Alex, and Reggie were all watching the exchange with pronounced frowns on their faces.

“I _hate_ her,” Flynn growled as the limo pulled away from the curb. “I’d like to wring her neck!”

“No murder, Flynn. Murder is _bad_ ,” Julie said.

“I wouldn’t _murder_ her,” Flynn grumbled. “I’d just maim her.”

“Hey Julie, come here!” Reggie called suddenly, beckoning her over to them. He and Alex had moved a little closer to her and Flynn, but Luke was still frozen at his perch.

Just as she and Flynn approached, a white car pulled up to the curb behind them. Alex’s face fell and he waved at the car signaling he was on his way.

“It’s my dad,” he murmured sadly, then gave Julie a soft smile. “You were amazing tonight, Julie. I just wanted to say thank you, and I hope we get to play together again soon.”

He squeezed her hand as he passed her, and Julie nodded. “Thanks, Alex. Goodnight.”

“You need a ride home, boys?” Alex’s dad called out the window as Alex started loading his drum kit into the back of the car.

Reggie nodded and turned back for his bass. “Sure! Thanks Mr. Whitlock.”

“I’m alright,” Luke called, and didn’t budge.

Reggie and Alex stopped at the curb and turned back to Luke.

“Where are you going tonight?” Reggie asked. “You can’t go back to Bobby’s.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Luke said with a careless shrug. “I’ll figure something out.”

“I would offer for you to stay at mine, but…” Reggie trailed off as if the reason Luke couldn’t stay with him was obvious. Maybe to Luke it was.

“I’ll be okay,” Luke said firmly. When Alex and Reggie only looked at him and made no move to get in Alex’s dad’s car, Luke forced a laugh. “Seriously, don’t worry. I got this. Go.”

“Luke…” Alex trailed off helplessly before he found his words. “My parents might let you stay over.”

“Your mom hates me,” Luke mumbled. “Guys, just go. I’m fine.”

“Boys!” Alex’s dad called. “Let’s get a move on.”

Alex and Reggie turned and headed for the car reluctantly. “See you at school, Julie!” Reggie said as they passed her.

She saw them watching Luke as they drove away.

“Julie?” Flynn whispered as Julie stepped closer to Luke.

He looked up as she made her slow approach, raising one eyebrow as she leaned up against the low wall next to him, so close that her shoulder was almost touching his knee. “Need something, Julie? I don’t have much to offer, but apparently I can kick someone’s ass if you need me to.”

Despite herself, Julie felt one corner of her mouth quirk up. “I don’t think I’ll be in need of those specific services any time soon, but I’ll let you know if something comes up,” she said, and quickly looked away, frowning. That sounded a lot more flirtatious than she’d meant for it to.

A quick glance up at Luke told her that he’d noticed as well. He was watching her closely, and all Julie could think of was how connected they had been up on that stage, sharing a mic and singing lines back and forth, lines that she had just learned but that spoke to her, lines that she felt on a very real, very personal level.

“Why does Alex’s mom hate you?” Julie asked.

Luke’s eyebrows shot up; he wasn’t expecting that. Fair enough, Julie thought, as she hadn’t meant to say it. If he was at all put off by her eavesdropping, though, he didn’t show it.

“I’m the one who got him into music,” Luke told her. “He picked drums, but it was my idea for us all to start a band together. Reggie was already rocking the bass. Alex’s mom doesn’t want him to have anything to do with music. She wanted him to play football.”

Julie frowned and tried to picture it. Alex with his pretty hair and the drumsticks he was constantly twirling? She couldn’t imagine him playing rough and tumble football, though he had thrown Luke off Bobby easily enough.

“His dad seems more supportive?” she said hesitantly.

“Not really. He doesn’t come to any of our shows or talk to him about anything Alex is interested in.” Luke shrugged. “I can’t really get into it all, but Alex’s parents really aren’t all that accepting. They love him, but they don’t really know him.”

Julie thought back to how scared Alex had been when he’d realized that she and Flynn had heard that he was gay. He had sounded so broken when he’d said that he wasn’t fully out. Now she realized that he meant he wasn’t out to his parents, and he didn’t think they would accept him. Looking at Luke, Julie thought Luke didn’t think they would accept Alex either.

“Where are you headed after this?” she asked him.

Luke frowned and looked down at his hands. He shrugged noncommittally. “Nowhere special,” he said carefully.

She noticed how he didn’t say anything about going home and she bit her lip. He looked so vulnerable all of a sudden, as if he _knew_ that she was about to put together the pieces. And she did. Reggie and Alex hadn’t wanted to go home and leave Luke all alone, not when Luke had apparently been planning to stay at Bobby’s before their friendship was completely dissolved. Not when Luke apparently couldn’t go home either. Because he didn’t have a home?

“My mom was a musician,” she blurted out. He looked up at her, eyes narrowed on her face as he tried to figure out why she would be telling him that. “She taught me how to play piano, how to sing, how to write… For the longest time, I thought she _was_ the music.”

“Nah, you’ve got your own music,” Luke said, then knocked her arm with his knee playfully. “And you’re pretty damn talented, Julie.”

“Tonight was the first time I sang since she died,” Julie confessed. “It was the first time I touched a keyboard, too.”

“You’re insanely talented. That doesn’t just go away because something bad happens,” Luke told her.

“She had a studio,” Julie said, then shrugged and smiled. “I mean, it’s our garage, but it’s decked out pretty nice. Her piano is in there, some guitars, a whole bunch of sound equipment. There’s a pretty comfy couch, too.”

Luke, who had been fidgeting nonstop, tapping his feet on the brick wall, stilled completely and their eyes met. She could see that he knew what she was getting at, and she suspected that she would have to choose her next words very carefully in order for his pride to allow him to cooperate.

“I haven’t been in there since she died,” she whispered. “I don’t think my dad and Carlos have, either.”

“Julie,” Luke said slowly.

“We used to write music together in there,” she told him. “I think that’s why I haven’t been able to play… and it’s hard… I can’t… I haven’t been able to face it.”

“I’m really sorry, Julie,” Luke whispered. “I didn’t know.”

She was sure that he knew her mom had died; everyone who was aware of her knew that her mom had died, and Luke had already admitted that he knew who she was when he’d said he thought she was friends with Carrie. And if Alex and Reggie had seen her compete in the talent show last year, there was no way Luke hadn’t as well. She was sure he knew, on some level, that her mother’s death had caused her pain. What he didn’t know until know, what she knew he was apologizing for, was that the cancer had robbed Julie of more than a mother. It had taken her music, too.

“Something happened tonight, Luke,” Julie said, and her voice was barely a whisper again. “Something happened when I played with you guys, when I sang your song, when I sang _with_ _you_. You brought the music back.”

Flynn was still there, off to the side, and Julie didn’t know if she could hear what they were saying, but she felt her gaze heavy on her back.

“I think… I think I could face it, the studio, if you were there,” she told him. It was a strange thought. He was a relative stranger to her; though they had grown up in the same town, gone to all the same schools, had very similar passions, and he was only one year older, they had never really spent any time together, never got to know one another. Still, she felt like she and Luke could help each other out tonight. She felt like they were the only ones who could help each other.

He was staring at her, eyebrows drawn together in a way that suggested he was feeling a little conflicted over how comfortable they were with each other, too. But he nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

Julie smiled at him and turned to hurry back to Flynn’s side. “So, um, Luke’s going to walk home with us,” she said in what she hoped was a casual tone.

“Oh. That’s nice of him to make sure we get home okay,” Flynn said.

“Well, actually, I think he’s going to stay over at my house,” Julie told her.

“ _Julie_ ,” Flynn said in a hushed, disbelieving tone. “What are you _thinking_? You just invited Luke Patterson home with you?”

Julie rolled her eyes, but she could feel that her face had gone red at the implication. Luckily it was dark enough that Flynn may not have noticed, and she doubted Luke would either. “Not like that, okay? He doesn’t have anywhere to go, and I really want to show him my mom’s studio.”

It was true that she was trying to help Luke out, give him a place to stay tonight, and she knew that he was well aware of that too, but she was telling the truth about wanting to share the studio with him as well. Something inside of her told her that if there was one person on this earth who could understand what it meant to her, who could help her face it all, it was Luke. Even more than her dad or Carlos. Even more than Flynn.

“You what?” The hurt was evident on Flynn’s face, and Julie felt really guilty for it, but she knew she was doing the right thing bringing Luke back there. She looked over her shoulder to see that he had jumped down from the wall and was standing there watching them awkwardly, like he could tell something was going on that he shouldn’t be privy to. He had pulled on his old, worn-out jacket and was holding his guitar case in one hand. His other hand was shoved deep in his pocket. He looked vulnerable again, but he also looked cool. Julie couldn’t honestly think of a time he hadn’t looked cool.

“Come on, we’re walking. It’s not far from here,” Julie told him.

It was a very quiet, awkward walk. Flynn was giving her the silent treatment so effectively that it rendered both Julie and Luke both completely mute, even for the first couple minutes after they left Flynn in front of her house. Maybe that wasn’t all down to Flynn, though. Maybe Luke was as aware of what it _looked like_ for him to be going home with her this late, sneaking past her dad, in the dark, to do something really intimate together.

Even if they both knew it wasn’t _that_ kind of intimacy, it was still nerve-racking.

“Do you only play guitar and piano?” Julie asked, breaking the painful silence. She’d never seen him play piano, but he had written that keyboard intro to _Finally Free_ so she knew he must.

Luke heaved a loud sigh that felt like relief. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I mostly play guitar because it’s just what I gravitate to and it’s easiest for me to write on the guitar, but sometimes I write songs on piano, too.” He nudged her shoulder with his. _Something in common_. “But I also play drums. And trumpet.”

“Trumpet?” Julie blinked up at him. “That’s Flynn’s instrument.”

Mostly, Flynn rapped, but she had to play an instrument to get into the music program, so she had chosen trumpet as a small joke. As it turned out, she was pretty good at it, and she really liked it.

He shrugged. “It was actually my intro to music. My mom enrolled me when I was a little kid. Five, maybe? But I wanted to sing, so I switched to piano. Then, I realized girls like guitarists and drummers more.”

“Because you’re all about girls,” Julie said sarcastically. While they’d never really interacted before, she knew he had never had a girlfriend, had never even shown any interest in a particular girl before. Even tonight, high on their awesome performance and with so many girls fawning over him, he hadn’t flirted back with a single one.

He looked at her, and she realized that she had once again said something to imply that she noticed more about him than she should. Until tonight, she hadn’t even realized that she paid so much attention to him.

After a minute, he shrugged. “I _like_ girls. At one point, I wanted to impress them. But then when I got serious about music, when I started writing? Well, I never met a girl who made me feel more than that before.”

Julie ducked her head. Why had he felt the need to emphasize that he liked girls? And what did he mean by _before_? Before what? She chanced a glance up at him, and found him watching her. She smiled shyly, and the smile she got back was electric, just like when they were on stage together tonight.

“So, your mom sounds like she supports your music,” Julie said, shoving her hair behind her ear.

Luke’s answering laugh was not at all amused. It was a sad, almost angry sound. “Not even a little.”

“But…” Julie trailed off. Maybe they didn’t know each other well enough yet for her to ask this of him.

“But she’s the one who got me started on it?” He guessed her thoughts easily and they weren’t touching but they were close enough that she could feel his shrug. “It’s her biggest regret. She thinks I’m throwing my life away because I don’t want to go to college. I don’t see the point in it. I know what I want to do. I want to make music. I want to connect with people through my music. I know we can do it, and college would just be a waste of time and money. It would just set us back. My folks don’t agree with that, and they threatened to take my guitar, to break it, to lock it away and send me away to fucking military school or something. So I left.”

And there it was. He hadn’t wanted to say it earlier, but somehow she had known. And for some reason now, barely half an hour after he initially tried to hide it from her, he was talking about it freely. Julie thought it should be strange that they were both sharing these secret, intimate details with each other so soon, but for some reason it didn’t feel too soon. It felt like she had known Luke for ages. It certainly didn’t feel like just a couple hours ago he had been trying to intimidate her and Flynn away from a hurt and vulnerable Alex.

“Well, I think you can do it,” Julie said. “Actually, I know you can. You’re so incredibly talented, Luke. All of you are. The way the three of you can connect with a crowd so effortlessly? And your lyrics? Oh, my God. They’re just so good.”

“Four of us,” Luke said. Julie looked up at him again, silently questioning the correction. There were only three of them now, after Bobby left. “There were four of us on that stage tonight, Julie.”

Julie stared at him for a second, shocked. Then, when she could control her mouth again, she said, “Are you inviting me to join Sunset Curve?”

“Nah, Sunset Curve is dead,” Luke said with a shrug. “The name was Bobby’s idea. We just couldn’t think of anything better, so we went with it. I think, if you join the band, we can come up with something much better.”

“Don’t you think you should ask Alex and Reggie first?” Julie sputtered. They were walking very slowly, she realized. Flynn lived a block away from her and still they hadn’t made it home.

“They already said they want you in the band,” Luke told her. He said it so casually, like it wasn’t a big deal. Like it was obvious. She had to admit, as different as each of them was, they did all seem to fit together seamlessly. “That’s what we wanted to talk to you about before Alex’s dad showed up.”

Julie remembered how Alex and Reggie had called her over, had moved closer to her, and she remembered that Luke had stayed right where he was atop the wall. She wondered if he hadn’t been as enthused by the idea as the other two, or if maybe he had been more nervous than they were. Nervous that she would turn them down?

Honestly, Julie didn’t know what she would have said had they had the chance to ask her before. She didn’t know what to say now.

She bit her lip and stopped in front of her house. “This is it,” she said, gesturing up at the dark house.

She was grateful to have arrived because she didn’t know how to answer his proposal. Tonight, performing with them, had been a truly magical experience, but she didn’t know if she was ready to do it again. She didn’t know if she could. Who was to say that tonight wasn’t just a one-off? What if she woke up tomorrow and was back to where she was before she had snuck into The Hollywood Ghost Club, unable to play, unwilling to sing?

For his part, Luke allowed the subject to drop. They both fell silent as they hurried up the drive. Inside, the lights were all off, which was a very good sign. The last thing she needed was for her dad to be awake and catch her trying to sneak a cute boy onto his property. Not that she thought he would be against helping out a kid who needed a place to stay. But it would be harder to convince him that that was all it was when they were sneaking in from a night club at two in the morning, both of them underage.

Julie held her breath as she opened the gate; it was never squeaky, but then, she wasn’t usually trying to sneak around in the middle of the night. To her immense relief, tonight was not the night that the hinges chose to need a good oiling. She ushered him into the back yard and quietly closed the gate behind them.

They crept, still silent, paranoid of being caught, through the yard until the grass turned to cobblestone. And there it was. Her mother’s studio. It was a simple building, just a garage painted white with heavy wood barn-style doors. She stopped in front of the door and stared at the handle. Luke didn’t push her, or rush her, or ask her why she didn’t just open the door already.

Instead, he reached down and took her hand. And waited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of those funny chapters where not a lot really happens, but at the same time kind of a lot happens and you learn a ton.   
> Lots of Luke. Lots of Julie. Lots of Juke.   
> I just hope you liked everything.   
> As usual, I had a lot of fun writing it!   
> Let me know what you think!


	6. There are no ghosts here, only memories.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julie and Luke face the studio together and Julie does a bit more healing.

After several moments’ hesitation with Luke patiently holding her hand, she took a deep breath and used her free hand to pull the studio door open. It swung out freely, quietly. It was dark inside, but Julie knew what she would see when she worked up the nerve to step inside and turn on the light.

There would be the colorful, soft little rug in the center of the room and the comfortable black couch on it, a soft chair beside the couch. There, on the far wall, would be the old, far less comfortable pull out couch her parents had refused to get rid of because it reminded them of when they first met in college. To the right of the door, in front of the window, would be her mother’s grand piano. To the left of the door, hanging on the wall, would be a small collection of guitars. In the loft there were several boxes of her mother’s belongings, and a bunch of old amps, some microphones, some recording equipment. There was a fully equipped bathroom in the back corner that her dad had put in after her mother had fallen asleep writing out here one too many times only to rush inside in the middle of the night in desperate need of a toilet.

She took a step inside, feeling along the wall with her free hand until she found the light switch. When the lights came on, she blinked against the way they burned her eyes. It looked exactly as she remembered it. Behind her, Luke set his guitar case on the ground and quietly closed the door behind him. The last thing they needed was for the light to wake her dad.

She watched him look around, taking it in. He looked free in here, and light, and younger than he had when he’d been sitting on top of that low wall trying to pretend he wasn’t concerned about where he was going to spend the night. When he spotted the guitars, his face lit up and he took several steps toward them before he froze and looked back at her sheepishly.

“Can I?” he asked softly.

“Yeah, help yourself,” she whispered, and not because it was two am and they had to be quiet, but because there was something special about this moment.

Luke grinned at her and turned back to the guitars, eventually selecting her mother’s favorite acoustic and lifting it off its hook. He strummed a quiet chord, found it sounded a little off after a year untouched, and got to tuning it. Julie leaned against the wall and watched him.

Once he had it perfectly tuned, he gave it another quick little strum before he started playing a soft melody she didn’t recognize. He closed his eyes and cocked his head as his fingers worked the strings. He paused, shook his head, and started over, altering the melody a bit as he did so, and she realized he was playing something new, making up a song right there in front of her on the guitar her mother had loved so much.

When he opened his eyes, he grinned at her, but the grin quickly slid away to horrified concern when he noticed how damp her eyes were.

“Sorry.” She took a deep breath and swiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “I’m okay. That just… that was my mom’s favorite guitar. I can’t tell you how many songs we wrote together on that guitar.”

“Julie,” Luke’s voice was soft and smooth, and remorseful. “I’m sorry. I’ll put it up.”

He had already turned, and was lifting it back up onto its hook when she spoke again. “No, don’t. It’s okay, really. She wouldn’t want it to just hang there. She would want it to be played.” She took another breath through her nose and walked to the couch, plopped down heavily on one end. “You just reminded me of her for a second.”

Luke looked at her with one eyebrow quirked, but he lowered his arm, still holding the guitar, and made his way over to her. “I remind you of your mom? That’s a new one.”

Despite herself, Julie laughed and shook her head at him. “I just mean… That was a new song, right?”

“Huh?” Luke looked down at the guitar in his hands, remembering the melody he had just played. “Oh. Yeah. Just something I was messing around with.”

“My mom used to do that all the time. Just pick up that guitar,” she gestured to his hands, “or sit at that piano,” she cocked her head toward it, “and in no time she had a new song. As easy as wiggling her fingers. She was magic. You’re pretty magical, too.”

“You think I’m magical?” he said softly as he sank down into the cushions beside her, and Julie felt herself blush _again_. She would have been too embarrassed to respond if he wasn’t sporting a similar flush.

“Your music,” she said, though there was something else, too. Something special about him that maybe had nothing to do with his music and everything to do with how easy he was to open up to. Even if emotional displays seemed to make him visibly uncomfortable, he pushed through and he dealt with it, and he never made her, or earlier Alex, feel bad about it.

“Thanks. Um, you’re pretty awesome, too.” The tips of his ears burned crimson and if he hadn’t tucked his long hair behind them, she never would have noticed. “Your voice, I mean. And you shredded that keyboard tonight. Pretty impressive for only just learning the song.”

“Yeah, well…” She ducked her head. “I took a few liberties.”

“They were good liberties,” he said immediately, and smiled when she laughed. “No, really. Every little note change and adlib was better than what I originally wrote, and it was so fun going back and forth with you like that.”

He was far away for a second, and Julie knew he was remembering how she had run up to him so that they could trade lines through the same mic. She hadn’t even really planned to do it, but she’d seen the way he and Reggie vibed off of each other and the way he interacted with Alex as best he could around the drums, and she had wanted to know if he had that effortless electric connection with her as well.

“Hey, do you want to try something?” he asked.

Her heartbeat quickened in her chest. She was suddenly very aware of how alone they were, and how close they were sitting.

But he was looking at the piano, as if he were imagining someone playing it, as if he were hearing a song on it. She looked over her shoulder. And startled. She could see her, sitting there, her fingers splayed out on the keys, grinning at her.

_Come, mija. Come play with me. We can write a song together, and it will be the most beautiful song the world has ever known._

Julie blinked. And she was gone. She took a deep breath. It was just late. She was tired. That was all.

 _There are no ghosts here_ , she told herself; she was looking at the empty piano bench again, though the vision of her mother here in this studio with her, playing the piano in the corner, was clear in her mind. _Only memories_.

She needed to go to bed.

She looked back at Luke, wondering if he had actually seen something or if his imagination had been running wild too. He wasn’t looking at the piano anymore, though. He was looking at her.

“You, um…” Luke hesitated, and his fingers plucked absently at the strings. He looked nervous, though the soft, quiet notes he was producing seemed to have some sort of soothing effect on him. “You said you and your mom used to write songs together. I was wondering if maybe you wanna try? With me?”

It was two am and she was hallucinating her mother’s ghost at the piano. She really needed to go to bed. But he was giving her that uncertain, vulnerable look again, like he really, _really_ wanted to write with her and was afraid she would turn him down but pretending like it was no skin off his back if she said no. Besides, she couldn’t help but wonder what writing with Luke would be like. His songs were so incredible as they were, but he was right earlier when he said that her adlibs had improved _Finally Free_.

And, well, apart from the whole troubled youth angle, he really was a lot like her mom. She wanted to know if that extended to writing together.

“Okay,” she said, and was rewarded with that blinding, electrifying smile. He didn’t even look tired. Julie wondered if he ever slept. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Yeah, actually!” He jumped up, set her mother’s guitar down very gently where he had just been sitting, and ran over to his guitar case. He opened it and dug around for a second and finally pulled out the same tattered notebook he had handed her when she was learning _Finally Free_. “I got this idea tonight. You know, because of how great we all were together.”

Julie smiled as he rushed back over to her, carefully picked up the guitar, and sat back down next to her, maybe even a little closer than he had been before. He flipped through to the back of the book again and Julie saw, in his very untidy scrawl, the beginnings of a song.

At the top of the page, he had written _Great? Becoming Great? Making Great_? and scratched out each title before rewriting _Great_ _(working title)_. There were a few hastily scrawled, barely legible lines beneath that.

“When did you even have time to start this?” she wondered aloud, leaning closer to try to make out his chicken scratch. She had only lost sight of him for a few minutes when they had first run off the stage, and he had rejoined them with his guitar case in hand maybe five minutes later, so she had thought Alex was right when he said Luke had probably just run off to grab his case.

“I’m always writing something,” he said dismissively.

“Yeah, but…” she paused and shook her head with a little smile. “Magical Luke.”

He beamed at her, the tips of his ears and the back of his neck showing red again. “Any thoughts?”

Julie bit her lip. She took the pen from his hand and scrawled a line of her own, neater by far than his writing, and looked up at him. They really were sitting very close together and he was looking down at her, something very much like wonder in his eyes.

“Was that melody you were playing for this song?” Julie asked, averting her gaze. Why was she so _nervous_? He wasn’t even doing anything. Just looking at her.

“Hmm?” Luke blinked, seemed to wake up from some sort of daydream. He looked down at the guitar he was holding and nodded. “Oh! Oh, yeah. Listen, I was thinking something like this…”

_I believe, I believe that we’re just one dream  
Away from who we’re meant to be  
That we’re standing on the edge of  
Something big, something crazy_

“That’s… really good,” Julie breathed when he trailed off into silence. The line she had written just fit in so well with what he had written, especially when he sang it. “What about _Our best days are yet unknown_?”

“Yeah!” Luke enthused, grinning brightly as he continued to play.

 _Something big, something crazy_  
Our best days are yet unknown  
That this moment is ours to own

He paused and looked down at the notebook, eyeing her much neater handwriting. “Um, how about you write it all down?”

She laughed and nodded. “Yeah, I think that’s a good system.”

They worked on it for a surprisingly short time before they had what felt like a complete set of lyrics and a really strong composition on the guitar. She grinned as she scratched out his working title one more time and wrote, at the very top of the page, in her neatest handwriting: _Edge of Great_.

“Yes,” Luke breathed in her ear as he swiped the pen from her and angled the notebook just so that she couldn’t see what he was doing. “Just missing one… small… detail. There! Perfect!”

Julie jumped when he thrust the page back out at her and forced herself to look away from his mouth, hoping that he hadn’t caught her staring. He just… he had stuck his tongue out, just the very tip of it, out of the corner of his mouth while he concentrated. It was adorable.

She looked down at the paper again, and smiled.

He had drawn a very poor attempt at the heart eye emoji, and then, in a still messy but much more legible scrawl, like he had put forth a lot of effort to make it look nice, he had written their names beneath the title.

“You’re right,” she said softly. “It is perfect.”

“You want to get it worked out on the piano?” Luke suggested eagerly, nodding at it across the room.

Julie froze for a moment, then slowly turned to look at it again. There was no one there. It was just an old piano. But it was her mother’s, and as many songs as she had seen her mother write on that guitar, helped her write, there were hundreds more they had written and played together on that piano. She shook her head. “No. No, I’m not ready for that yet.”

She half expected Luke to protest, to want to get it done already because he was so in the songwriting zone, but he only looked at her and nodded.

“Okay, that’s cool,” he said, and turned back to his notebook. “Listen, so I was thinking… if we go up high here…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JUKE JUKE JUKE JUKE JUKE  
> Part of me is like ughhh this is dragging on so long, kiss already. But the rational part of me is keeping in mind that they have literally only known each other for a few hours at this point lol  
> I'm posting this update wayyyy earlier in the day than I normally would because I work pretty late today and I just wanted to get it up when I'm not exhausted after a long day.  
> I hope you guys liked it. Let me knowwwwwww  
> <3 <3


	7. You can thank me in music.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” her father greeted her when she stumbled downstairs a little after ten. It was late by her standards, but her dad didn’t know that she’d barely gotten five hours of sleep last night because she’d been out in the garage with Luke so long.

“Morning, Papi,” she said, stifling a yawn as she headed for the kitchen. “Where’s Carlos?”

He wasn’t in his room when she’d forced herself out of bed, and the bathroom was free. He wasn’t in the living room with their dad, or in the kitchen stealing all the waffles.

“He went to a friend’s house,” he called.

Julie hummed as she fixed herself a waffle, slathering butter on and drenching it in syrup. She could see the garage from the window, and she thought of Luke, assumed he was probably still sleeping. She eyed the small stack of waffles that were left over. Her dad always made too many. She wondered if Luke would want one, wondered if she could sneak one out to him without her father noticing.

When she turned around, she almost had a heart attack. Her father was standing in the doorway watching her with the strangest look on her face. He looked awed, emotional, relieved, and a bit suspicious.

“What are you humming?” he asked.

“Oh.” She carried her plate to the table and sat down, carefully not meeting her father’s stare. “Just something I wrote.”

_We’re standing on the edge of great_

It was silent for a long moment after she sang one line for him. Then, her father took several steps into the kitchen and the chair across from hers scraped the floor as he pulled it out and sat heavily. “You’re writing again? Since when?”

“Since last night,” she said truthfully.

“Is that why you slept so long? You were up late writing?” His tone was casual, but there was something off about it.

When Julie looked up at him, he was watching her closely, expectantly. She realized with a sinking feeling in her stomach that he knew she had snuck out. Whether or not he knew about the boy in the studio was another story. But she knew she had to tell him the truth.

“Kind of,” she said, biting her lip. “Papi, just hear me out, okay?”

He raised his eyebrows at her, but said nothing.

“Okay, yes, I snuck out. Flynn and I went to the Battle of the Bands at The Hollywood Ghost Club.” His eyes widened; he knew the place, and that it was very much not a place for underage kids to hang out. “Hear me out! We just went to watch the Battle of the Bands! No drinking or anything bad! Aside from the sneaking out. Really, I swear!”

“Julie…” he said sternly.

“I played in the Battle of the Bands!” she said desperately. It did the trick; his mouth snapped shut and his eyes went wide again, this time with wonder. “There was this band, these boys from school. They needed a fourth member and I just knew I could do it. No, I knew I _had to_ do it. We were really, really good, Papi! We would have won if Carrie’s dad hadn’t bought off Mr. Covington.”

“It wasn’t even actually that upsetting that we lost because _I played the keys,_ Papi. _I sang_. And we played together so well that they want me to join their band!” Julie said. “I didn’t know if it was a good idea at first, but then Luke and I spent all night writing together and I just know it’s right. I know that we’re meant to write together, that we’re meant to share a stage and connect with people. Together.”

“Who is Luke?” Her father demanded. “And what do you mean you spent all night writing with him?”

“Luke is the guitarist and lead vocalist, and he’s an incredible songwriter.” His face was turning steadily redder and he kept looking to the stairs. When she realized why, her jaw dropped. “He’s not here! Well, he’s not in the house! We didn’t spend the night together like that.”

“What do you mean he’s not in the _house_?” her father asked.

“He’s in the studio,” she said weakly. “At least, he was when I left a few hours ago.”

She half expected him to get up and immediately storm outside to see, but he didn’t. Instead, he just stared at her. “The studio?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Papi, you have to try to understand. Luke didn’t have anywhere to go last night. He was staying with a friend who turned out not to be a good friend, and he couldn’t go home to his parents because… well, he just couldn’t. And I felt like I… well, I knew I could trust him with the studio. And I was right. We were in there for _hours_ last night, writing together.”

“You went in the studio,” her father said meekly. “You brought a boy into the studio.”

“I didn’t think you would be this upset about it.” She couldn’t meet his gaze. “You always said the studio was mine when I could bring myself to face it.”

“I’m not upset. I’m not _happy_ with you for sneaking, but I’m not uspet,” her father said, and she felt her gaze snap to his, was surprised to see that he meant it. Any trace of anger his expression had held before had melted away to something entirely different. He looked at her in wonder, and curiosity. “I want to meet him.”

“What?” she said.

“I want to meet the boy who brought music back into your life,” he said. “You can either go get him yourself or I will.”

He made as if to stand, but Julie leapt to her feet. “No! No! I’ll go! I’ll do it!”

Her father was laughing quietly to himself as she bolted for the door. She didn’t even know if he was still here, she realized as she crossed to the studio. How did she know he hadn’t gotten a few hours of sleep, woken up, and then left to go wherever he usually spent the day? Where did he usually spend his time, she wondered, if he didn’t have his home? She assumed he spent a lot of time writing and rehearsing with the boys, but where did they do that? She wondered if the answer was Bobby’s house. Just how much had Luke and the boys lost out on last night when Bobby showed his true colors?

She paused at the door, wondering what she should do. Just let herself in? Knock? What if he didn’t answer? What if he did? What if he was gone? What if he wasn’t gone? What if he was still asleep? Was she supposed to wake him up? How would she go about doing that?

She bit her lip and looked over her shoulder. Her father was watching her from the back door, looking very amused as she hesitated nervously. She frowned and turned back to the door and knocked lightly. There was no answer. She tapped a little harder, straining her ears to hear any rustling from within. There was nothing. Heart sinking, she wondered if he actually had already left.

She pulled the door open just wide enough that she could peer in. And there he was lying face down on the couch they had spent hours writing together on. It was a decent sized couch, just long enough for him to stretch out across without looking too cramped. She stepped inside and crept closer. His mouth was open, his breathing soft and steady. His hair, long and messy as it usually was, was especially chaotic now.

Smiling, Julie reached out to touch it. It was soft and silky against her fingers, and invited her to sink her fingers in deeper. She did, and soon found herself all but giving him a scalp massage.

With a jolt of humiliation, she realized he had opened sleepy eyes and was staring up at her. Her cheeks flamed and she dropped her hand, about to apologize profusely when she noticed his content smile. He caught her hand in his and threaded their fingers together. He had done that a few times last night, and she was beginning to wonder if he was just an affectionate guy or if he was feeling something akin to what she was feeling.

“Nice PJs,” he said in a raspy, sleepy voice that made her heart race before it dropped to her toes when she realized she was wearing the pajamas Flynn had gotten her for Christmas last year, the onesie with the pink and purple cats all over. Worse, she was wearing her stupid, fuzzy monster slippers. She almost yanked her hand away and ran back up to the house to change, but what would be the point? He had already seen what she was wearing, had already gently teased her for it.

“Nice bedhead,” she said weakly.

His smile only widened. “I know.”

“My dad knows you’re here,” she said, and watched the smile slowly slide from his lips.

“Oh man. I’m sorry.” He sat up quickly and let go of her hand to try in vain to flatten his hair to his head. “Did I get you in trouble. Shit, how bad is it?”

Julie cocked her head with a thoughtful frown. “Actually, somehow, I think you got me out of trouble.”

Luke’s eyebrows knit together as he stared up at her, heart achingly confused. She couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight of him, and reached out to stroke his hair again under the guise of helping him straighten it. She imagined he probably suspected that it was all just a ruse, just an excuse to touch him again, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“He knew I snuck out, but he didn’t know where I went, or how long I was out, or that you were here until I told him everything,” she explained. “And when I told him how I played with you guys, and how I sang with you, and that we were in here writing last night… Well, he wants to meet you.”

She watched his adam’s apple bob as he took a nervous gulp. This was why she hadn’t wanted her dad, harmless as he may be, to come wake Luke up. Because Luke had a tough enough time with his own parents and he seemed to be under the impression that Alex’s parents didn’t like him, and she didn’t know what the deal was with Reggie’s parents but Luke hadn’t gone home with Reggie last night, had he? Poor Luke just seemed to expect all parents to have a problem with him.

“I promise he’s not mad,” Julie said softly. “My dad… he can be lame sometimes… his _is_ a dad, but he’s really pretty cool. And music isn’t a bad thing in his eyes, or a phase. He knows how important it is. He married my mom.”

She didn’t say, because it was embarrassing, that her dad wanted to thank him for reconnecting her to music. It felt different last night, to say something similar, when it had been dark and he had been so vulnerable himself. Now, in the morning, it was too much.

“I guess I don’t really have an out,” Luke said with a sigh. “I slept in his garage last night.”

Julie bit her lip to hide her smile when she saw the puppy dog pout on his face. He was so… adorable, which was not a word she would have thought to use for Luke Patterson as recently as last night. Intense? Yes. Intimidating? Sometimes. Talented? Of course. Hot? Always. Adorable? It was a new one, and she realized she liked it.

“He made waffles,” she said.

It did the trick. Luke perked up immediately, his eyes shining with hope. “Waffles?”

“With butter and maple syrup,” she added. He still looked uneasy, but he was alight with interest now. She laughed and gave his hand a quick tug. “Come on.”

He got to his feet and followed her slowly to the garage door. Without a word, without otherwise acknowledging the point of contact, they pulled their hands apart before they stepped outside. Her dad wasn’t watching from the back door anymore, but she could just make out his figure moving around the kitchen through the window.

Luke laughed quietly as they headed up to the house. When she looked back at him, he shook his head with a small smirk. “I didn’t even see the slippers before.”

“Shut up.” When he only laughed again, she scowled, blushing, and stomped the rest of the way to the house.

He followed close behind her until she stepped into the kitchen. He stopped in the doorway and waited, wide-eyed and nervous. Julie’s dad had his head in the refrigerator and when he turned around, he was holding a container of coffee creamer.

“Oh, hello,” he said, glancing quickly at Julie and then leveling a longer, more appraising look on Luke, who shifted anxiously, his gaze flitting from Julie to her dad and back. Julie had a moment to wish Luke was wearing sleeves before she realized that it was likely her dad would overlook that in favor of focusing on how clearly terrified the boy was. “Coffee? I know you had a late night.”

It took a while for Luke to find his tongue, and when he did all he could do was stammer. Julie rolled her eyes at him and followed her dad to the coffee maker. “Thank you, Papi. I’m _so_ tired.”

“That’s what happens when you spend all night writing songs, _mija_ ,” he said lightly, and without any malice, as he pressed a soft kiss to the side of her head and handed her two steaming cups of coffee.

“I know, Papi,” she said as she crossed back to Luke and pushed one of the two cups into his hands. She took him by the elbow and led him to the table where her own breakfast sat, sadly still mostly untouched, gesturing for him to take a seat. “Papi, this is Luke. Luke, this is my dad.”

“Hi,” Luke said with an amusingly awkward wave of his hand as he sat heavily in the chair next to Julie. He was still having trouble making eye contact with her dad, but at least he managed an actual word.

“How many waffles do you want, Luke?” Julie’s dad asked. Before Luke could embarrass himself with another round of stammering, he gave the nervous teen another once-over and shrugged. “Let’s start with two. You can have more if you’re still hungry after.”

“Breathe,” Julie hissed in Luke’s ear as they watched her father reach for another plate and stack more waffles on it.

Luke’s shoulders hunched and he shot her that scared puppy look again. He straightened up when they heard her father approaching and Julie thought he looked almost like he was anticipating an assault.

“So, Luke,” her father said as he handed him a plate with the promised two waffles on it and sat once more in the chair across from Julie. “How long do you need a place to stay?”

Luke gaped at him, and then looked to Julie for help, but she was just as surprised. He took the plate with surprisingly steady hands and dropped his gaze awkwardly. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to be a burden last night.”

“I didn’t say you were a burden. I didn’t even know you were here last night until Julie woke up.” Her father’s eyebrows drew together as he frowned thoughtfully at the boy across from him. “I asked you how long you need a place to stay. Julie didn’t go into detail, but she said you didn’t feel like you could go home last night.”

Julie bit her lip and avoided meeting Luke’s eyes when she felt his gaze on her. Luke did that awkward stammering thing again, and her dad sighed.

“Luke, _relax_. I’m not upset with you,” he said gently. “If anything, I should be thanking you for bringing music back to my daughter.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Luke mumbled to his waffles, sounding equally as embarrassed as Julie felt.

“I think you did,” her father said simply. “Look, just… do your parents at least know that you’re safe?”

Luke shrugged. “As long as I’m playing music, I doubt they even care.”

“Well.” Julie’s dad paused and took a deep, steadying breath. “It’s about time we brought some life back to that studio. You can stay as long as you need to. I don’t know if Julie gave you the full tour, but there’s a bathroom out there with a shower and everything, and the couch is all yours.”

Julie stared at her father. Next to her Luke was gaping, mouth and eyes wide open, at him across the table.

“That is, if it’s okay with you, _mija_.”

She looked at Luke, who was still staring in utter disbelief, and smiled before turning back to her father. “It’s okay with me.”

“Great, then it’s settled,” her dad said. “The studio is open to you as long as you need a place to stay.”

“Y-you… Sir, you don’t have to…that’s really not…” Luke stopped and looked at Julie, but she could only shrug at him; she hadn’t expected this of her father, either.

“Don’t worry, it’s not an imposition,” her father said. “Besides, you can thank me in music. I want to see you all play together.”

“Papi?” Julie said, confused when he winked at her.

“Well, it’s a studio, isn’t it? And doesn’t your band need somewhere to practice?”

Luke’s head swung around to stare at Julie. She stared back for a second. She still hadn’t answered him last night, after he had invited her to join the band. Suddenly, she knew. She looked at her dad and smiled.

“Yeah, I guess we do,” she said.

Next to her, though she tried really hard to avoid his gaze, she saw out of the corner of her eye that Luke’s face lit up.

“Sweet,” he breathed, and she couldn’t help but look over at him and beam back.

They smiled at each other for an almost awkwardly long time before Luke finally tucked into his waffles. When Julie looked up and caught her father’s eye, he was looking between the two of them with a knowing smile on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is Papa Ray the best dad ever, or what?   
> I feel like his whole "I'm mad at you... never mind, i'm proud of you... WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WERE WITH A BOY ALL NIGHT... wow, what an awkward kid, i love him he is my new son" is very on brand for Ray Molina.   
> Most supportive father ever, omg.   
> Once again another very early update -- working late again today and I just wanted to get this up!  
> Hope you liked it! Let me knooooooooowww!


	8. We're gonna need a new name, boys.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reggie and Alex learn the good news, Ray gets to meet the band.  
> Luke's perspective.

The first thing Luke did after breakfast, besides take advantage of the studio shower, was to call Alex and Reggie. He had about a dozen missed calls from each of them, and he knew they were probably about to lose their minds. Julie wandered in wearing a pretty yellow dress with a white t-shirt under it just as he put the phone to his ear. His mouth went a little dry when he looked at her. It was so weird; no girl had ever made him feel like this, but then she had been right last night when she’d said that he’d never really shown much interest in girls before.

“Luke! Where have you been?” Alex demanded, picking up on the first ring.

Luke tore his gaze from Julie, who sat at the opposite end of the couch and picked up his songbook where it sat on the little table in front of the couch. He had already assured her last night that she could look at all his songs if she wanted to, and he trusted that she wouldn’t have dared flip through it like she was now if she didn’t think that he meant it.

“Hey, man. You with Reggie?” he said into the phone, easing back into the corner of the couch and resting his bare feet on the table. It may have taken him a second to catch his cool in front of Julie’s dad, but the dude was pretty awesome as adults went, and now that Luke had been given free reign of the studio he was feeling a lot more at ease.

“Yes, and we’ve been looking everywhere for you. Are you okay?” Alex said. He could hear Reggie in the background, but Alex was well practiced at ignoring Reggie’s distractions when he was on the phone.

“I’m good,” he said. “Sorry, this morning has kind of been… a lot.”

“Dude, what is going on?” Alex said, and Luke knew the face he would get if he could see Alex: lips parted just slightly, eyes narrowed, nose barely scrunched up. It was what he liked to call Alex’s anxiety-scowl.

“I’ll explain later,” Luke promised. He had to admit, he was kind of enjoying the suspense. That, and he wanted to see the looks on the boys’ faces when he told them that not only did they have a new _totally awesome_ studio, Julie had agreed to join their band. And he guessed they would be pretty stoked to hear that he had a safe place to stay, too. “Where are you guys?”

“We’ve been looking for you all morning,” Alex said, sounding annoyed. “We checked The Pier, the park, the Shack, now we’re at Mona’s. Our last resort was going to be Bobby’s.”

Luke scoffed. “Like I would go back there.”

But he would need to at some point, he realized. His stuff was at Bobby’s: his acoustic guitar which was not as nice as Julie’s mom’s, of course, but sentimental all the same; several of his older songbooks which were very important to him, obviously; his clothes, which wouldn’t normally be of much concern to him except he really didn’t think Julie would appreciate it if he smelled like sweat and B.O. from wearing the same outfit every day and he was beginning to realize that he definitely wanted for Julie, in her pretty dress with her pretty hair, to appreciate him; his school bag, which wasn’t nearly as important to him, but he figured he should continue to at least put in the bare minimum effort and graduate high school.

Maybe he would ditch school on Monday – not a great way to go about that whole graduating high school thing, admittedly – and break into Bobby’s garage after his parents left for work and haul all his crap over here.

“Okay, but _where are you_?” Alex demanded.

Rolling his eyes – Alex could be so dramatic – he dropped the phone to his chest and looked over at Julie, who was bobbing her head thoughtfully as she read one of his songs. He wondered which one she was looking at, and wondered if the melody she was imagining was anything like the one he imagined, or if it was even better.

“They’re at Mona’s. You wanna meet up with them there or should they come here?” he asked. He could just barely hear Alex’s voice coming through the speaker, but he couldn’t make out any of the words. His tone was enough to tell Luke that he didn’t really want to know what Alex was saying.

“What’s Mona’s?” she asked, looking up just in time to catch his look of utter disbelief.

“You don’t know _Mona’s_?” he said, completely scandalized.

“I wouldn’t have asked what it was if I already knew,” she told him, rolling her eyes, but Luke already had the phone back up and was speaking.

“We’re gonna meet up with you guys,” Luke said quickly.

“ _Lucas_ ,” Alex said, and Luke knew he was really getting to Alex when he dropped the full first name. “Who are you with?”

“My _name_ is Luke,” he grumbled. Julie smirked and looked back down at the song she was reading. “And don’t worry about it; you’ll see.”

He hung up before Alex could respond and leapt to his feet, grabbing her hand in what was quickly becoming a habit for him. Julie didn’t seem to mind; her fingers tightened _just a little_ around his, and he smiled at her. “Come on.”

She only resisted a little as he pulled her to the door, but she planted her feet and turned up to the house when he tried to lead her out through the gate they had snuck through last night.

“What are you doing?” he protested.

She rolled her eyes at him over her shoulder. “I have to ask my dad first.”

Right. Parental permission. It had been a while since he had needed that, and honestly even when he had lived with his parents, he hadn’t really let them stop him from doing much.

“That is _so_ not rock and roll,” he teased her, but he wasn’t really all that put out. Her dad was, after all, letting him live and play rent free in his garage studio. He did drop her hand when they reached the door, though. Just in case.

“Papi?” Julie called when they walked into the kitchen.

“Mija?” Came the joking reply from somewhere far away.

“Come on,” Julie said to Luke, and headed up the stairs.

Luke hesitated for a second, but then followed after Julie. Her dad had offered him free reign of the studio, but hadn’t really gone into any other house rules. Luke could guess at a few of them, though, as a door to the left of the staircase caught his eye. It was a wide wooden door with girly purple and pink letters on it that spelled out JULIE. The assumption that it was a space that was totally off limits to him only made him want to see what was on the other side of that door all the more.

Julie turned away from her room and led him around the banister to a room with two glass doors that swung open inward. They were both open, and Julie stepped right in. Luke stopped in the doorway to what looked like Mr. Molina’s office. There was a desk set deep into the room and Mr. Molina sat at it, wearing a pair of glasses as he frowned at his computer screen.

He looked up when he heard his daughter enter the room and Luke was floored by the sincere and open love on his face when he looked at Julie. He couldn’t remember the last time his parents had looked at him with anything that wasn’t disapproval. But then, he hadn’t seen his parents in months.

“Is it okay if Luke and I go meet up with Reggie and Alex?” Julie asked.

She had told him all about the other guys while Luke inhaled the two waffles her dad had made him, and then a third Julie tossed onto his plate. At least, she’d told him as much as she knew. She was pretty on point for most of it. Reggie was a total goofball with a good heart and Alex was just about the nicest person in the world. She hadn’t picked up on Reggie’s moodswings yet – that kid could get really down on himself after a bad night with his parents – or Alex’s really bad anxiety – Luke thought it probably stemmed from hiding such a big part of himself from most everybody else. He knew that would come in time, that before long she would know just about everything about them, just like Luke did. She would probably, he knew, learn everything about him, too. It made him wonder how she would describe him if he weren’t standing right next to her.

He thought about how he would describe her, if he had anyone to describe her to. Wicked talented would be first on the list. Electrifying, too, as he remembered the way she had captured the crowd in a way that he had heard people say he did, too. Selfless, obviously. She’d set her grief aside last night to play with them, to give them a shot at competing even though she didn’t even really know them. Trusting. She had brought him here, to her house, in the middle of the night, spent hours alone with him when no one even knew he was around, opened up to him about her mom and how hard it had been for her to play since she’d lost her. She was strong, and brave, and smart. And just _so_ pretty.

Luke blinked. Julie was talking, answering a question he had totally missed.

“…place called Mona’s,” she was saying, and she looked over at Luke uncertainly. “But I don’t actually know what or where it is?”

Before Luke could say anything, Julie’s dad was already nodding his head. “Oh, yeah, I know the place.”

“You do?” Luke asked. Was Julie’s dad just, like, the coolest dude ever or something? How did a _dad_ know Mona’s?

“Yeah.” Mr. Molina laughed. “Rose and I met at Mona’s, and I’ve done a few shoots out there.”

“Dad’s a photographer and a videographer,” Julie told Luke.

That explained the cameras on every shelf and the lighting equipment in the corner of the room.

“But is _anyone_ going to tell me what Mona’s is?” Julie demanded.

Mona’s was a beachside record store that also served as a low-cost food stand. It was a small shack, but it had been decorated nicely with surfboard and records and posters all over the place, which explained why Mr. Molina had done photoshoots in and around the place.

Alex and Reggie were outside when they pulled up, looking around expectantly. Luke knew they were waiting for him, and it was funny to think that they didn’t even see him here in the car less than twenty feet from them. Of course, Luke couldn’t blame them. He hadn’t expected Julie’s dad to insist on driving them down there either. He’d thought they would walk there. Luke walked or rode his bike – damn, another thing he’d left at Bobby’s – just about everywhere.

“Thanks, Papi,” Julie said, and leaned across the center console to kiss her dad.

“Yeah, thanks Mr. Molina,” Luke said awkwardly as he reached for the door handle.

“It’s Ray, Luke,” he said.

“Oh. Right,” Luke said.

“Call me if you need a ride home,” Ray said, turning back to Julie. Then he caught Luke’s eye in the mirror again. “And let the boys know they’re welcome over anytime.”

“Sure. Thanks again Mr… uh, Ray,” Luke said and jumped out of the car.

Reggie noticed him first; he looked confused when Luke stepped out of a strange car in front of him and Alex, who stared blankly at him for a few seconds. When Julie jumped out next to him, their eyes just about bugged right out of their heads. Then, when they recovered from the shock of finding out who Luke’s mystery companion was, they swooped in and converged on her, whooping excitedly.

“Julie!” Alex shouted, wrapping her in what Luke knew from experience was a bone-crushing hug.

“Our hero!” Reggie exclaimed, and then knocked Alex and Luke both aside so that he could hug her.

Julie laughed and Luke noticed that her cheeks were a little pink. “Hey, guys.”

“Alright, alright,” Luke said, trying in vain to pull Reggie off of her. “She needs to breathe.”

His boys wheeled on him then, betrayal clear on their faces.

“You!” Reggie said, thrusting a finger in Luke’s face. “Traitor! Why would you keep this angel from us?”

“Poor, innocent, beautiful Julie,” Alex cooed. He threw an arm over Julie’s shoulders, then scowled at Luke. “I apologize for anything insensitive Luke might have said.”

Luke was offended for all of two seconds before he saw that Julie was shaking her head, grinning. “He was great. He’s a good listener, and he helped me out a lot.”

Suddenly he felt hot all over, and he shoved his hands deep in his pockets and shrugged, trying desperately to ignore the disbelieving look Alex was shooting him and choosing instead to focus on the soft smile Julie was sending his way.

“Yeah, uh, anyway,” he said, shooting for nonchalant. “Julie and I decided we’re gonna need a new name, boys.”

They looked from Luke to Julie and back to Luke before they both started talking over each other.

“You asked her!”

“She said yes!”

“Oh my God, this is the best day ever!”

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner!”

Julie laughed and shrugged helplessly as she looked between her two new hysterical band mates. “He asked me. I said yes.”

Then, for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Luke found himself in a dog pile on the ground with Alex, Reggie, and Julie. Alex’s elbow was in his ribs and Reggie was crushing his leg, but when his other arm brushed Julie’s waist, Luke found he didn’t really care.

-

Julie backed away from him slowly as the music slowly faded away. Her eyes were bright; she was grinning and breathing heavily; she looked so beautiful and alive that Luke had difficulty tearing his gaze away from her. But her dad was sitting in the chair by the couch watching them.

Alex stood and made his way around his drums to give Julie a grinning high five as Luke carefully set his guitar on one of the old stands he had found up in the loft. Reggie bumped Luke with his elbow to grin at him. Julie’s dad – Ray – started clapping and when Luke looked over, he was grinning, that same bright smile that Julie was sporting, but there was a hint of pride in his face.

They had played _Finally Free_ for him because he wanted to see them all together, wanted to hear how they sounded and it was the only song they had ever actually performed before. Luke was surprised at how relieved he was to see that Julie’s dad clearly liked it.

Ray stood and wrapped Julie in a fierce, warm hug. He said something to her, something quiet, in Spanish. The only words Luke caught and recognized were _tu madre_ , and Julie’s eyes were damp, but still bright when they pulled apart.

She returned to stand with Luke, Reggie, and Alex and the four of them turned to face Ray.

“You guys _are_ really good,” Ray said with a small laugh. “I’m glad that we’ll finally have some music back in this space.”

“Well, we still only have the one song right now,” Reggie said.

“Yeah, I think we’re all agreed that we’re not going to keep playing the stuff we did with Bobby?” Alex questioned, looking around at the three of them.

“Definitely not,” Luke said, frowning as he thought of the songbooks he had filled with material he was mostly now going to have to blacklist. He hadn’t shared _everything_ with Bobby, but close to it.

“We’re actually already working on that,” Julie offered, looking at Luke with a small smile that made him forget all about his wasted songs.

“Yeah, we’ve got two songs to show you,” Luke said, swiping his songbook from the coffee table and tossing it to Alex.

“Oh, this is going to be a beautiful arrangement,” Reggie said, jostling Julie playfully with his shoulder.

“These are good!” Alex said enthusiastically. “Are they ready? Can we play them?”

“Yeah!” Luke picked up his guitar again, already beginning to strum the chords they had worked out the night before. “They’re not completely done, but they’re ready for your input. Come one, Jules, you ready?”

Julie smiled at him again, that smile that made him feel weird, but in a really good way. “Yeah, yeah, let’s run through them.”

Ray laughed at their eagerness and shook his head. “I’m going to head inside. I’m thinking pizza for dinner. Boys, you’re staying, right?”

“Yeah, sure, thanks, Ray!” Alex said as he sat back on the couch to listen to Julie and Luke sing.

“Um, yeah!” Reggie turned hopeful eyes on Ray. “Pepperoni?”

“You got it,” Ray said, and looked around the studio one more time before he walked away.

 _Running from the past_  
Tripping on the now  
What is lost can be found, it’s obvious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hey hey!  
> Thought I would try something different with this one! Most of the chapters are going to be from Julie's perspective, but I think I might occasionally switch it up.  
> Honestly, I started writing this from Julie's perspective as normal but then I wanted to write Luke's phone call with Alex, so I changed it.  
> Let me know what you think!  
> And also, I just want to say thank you guys so much for the response to the last chapter! You have no idea how happy you all made me yesterday! <3 <3 <3


	9. I don't think I can face this without you.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys rescue their stuff; Julie calls Flynn; Double Trouble faces it together.

Julie woke to the sound of rowdy boys echoing up the stairs. It sounded like someone was fighting with Carlos, but her dad was laughing, so Julie wasn’t too concerned. She rolled over in her bed, reached for her phone, and groaned when she saw that it was already nine o’clock.

She hadn’t stayed up nearly as late last night as the night before, but it had been close to eleven when Reggie and Alex had finally left, and then she had stuck around to write with Luke for a while after that. Twice didn’t make a pattern, but Julie had a feeling that she wasn’t going to be getting much sleep with Luke Patterson living in her studio and constantly wanting to write with her. Not that she didn’t want to write with him, but she could do with more than a few hours of sleep every night.

She wondered how he did it as she heard his delighted laughter and smiled. Maybe he was used to surviving on little sleep. Probably, since Sunset Curve had been playing the Hollywood club scene for months now.

Her dad had cooked breakfast again, and seemed to actually be enjoying the opportunity to cook for a group of teenage boys as he was surveying the spread he’d laid out on the table when Julie stumbled downstairs. There was what looked like a whole pound of bacon fried to perfection, a huge platter of eggs, and several stacks of pancakes. Her dad wasn’t a good cook by any means, but he had always had a knack for knocking breakfast out of the park.

Luke noticed her first, and smirked at her from his spot at the table. “Nice jammies.”

“I know,” she shot back, scowling. She didn’t even care today that she was wearing a set of oversized Christmas pajamas. At least she had left the monster slippers behind.

“That’s my line,” Luke mumbled under his breath as she fell into the chair next to him.

“Here you go.” Her dad, glorious man that he was, handed her a cup of coffee. “Am I going to have to set a curfew on the song writing, you two?”

“That is _such_ a dad line,” Luke said. He had come a long way in just twenty-four hours, had gone from barely able to speak a word to her dad to joking and grumbling about what a _dad_ he was.

Julie hid her smile behind her mug as she took a sip. “Thank you, Papi.”

“I _called_ that pancake!” Carlos complained loudly, suddenly reaching for the pancake Reggie had just speared. Julie saw the poorly contained smirks on both of their faces and figured this had to be the source of the fighting that had woken her up. It didn’t surprise her that Reggie seemed to be bonding well with her little brother; he was clearly the youngest at heart of all the boys.

He had met them the night before when he got home from his friend's house and he had seemed thrilled to have three older boys around. Julie had been worried at first that they wouldn't be cool with an eight year-old trying to talk to them, but all three of them had been surprisingly nice to Carlos. Carlos, for his part, already seemed convinced that Reggie, at least, was _his_ friend and not Julie's.

“You guys are here early,” Julie said, eyeing Alex, who was rolling his eyes at Reggie.

“Yeah, well, we wanted to get an early start on rescuing our stuff,” Alex told her. “Sorry if we woke you.”

Julie shrugged. “I can’t sleep all day. When are you going?”

“Right after breakfast,” her dad said as he finally sat in the last vacant chair. “There’s no point in putting it off.”

And that right there was the reason, she suspected, that Luke was quickly warming up to her dad. After they had played for him, he had promised the boys that he would take them to rescue the rest of their stuff from Bobby. Really, Luke’s seemingly ingrained mistrust of adults stood no chance against her dad.

“I just need to get dressed,” Julie said as she scooped some scrambled eggs onto her plate. “And then we’re good to go.”

“Actually,” Luke said quickly, and in a surprisingly serious tone, “I think you should stay here.”

She must have looked offended – she certainly felt offended – because Luke’s eyes widened and he rushed to explain.

“It’s just that we don’t know how Bobby’s going act when he sees us! He might say some pretty bad stuff again, and…”

He trailed off, and Reggie helpfully chimed in. “And Luke doesn’t keep his cool very well when people are being rude to his friends.”

“As you probably remember,” Alex added.

He was right; Julie did remember Luke knocking Bobby to the ground and straining against Alex to climb on top of him and proceed to beat him senseless. He had been so angry; if Alex hadn’t restrained him, Julie wasn’t sure how far Luke would have taken it.

“Well, yeah,” Luke said. “And speaking of which, Alex, I think you should stay too.”

Alex shot Luke a look so severe that Julie was surprised Luke didn’t flinch or run away. “He has my cajon. I’m not staying behind.”

Luke may not have withered under Alex’s glare, but he also didn’t argue. Instead, he sighed and frowned at Julie. “Well?”

Julie rolled her eyes and shrugged. “I’ll stay, but only because I really need to call Flynn. I’m not afraid of Bobby, and I’m not afraid of you being rightfully mad at him.”

She almost reached for his hand, but remembered her dad, her brother, and their friends and instead leaned over to grab piece of bacon at the last minute. She saw Luke’s gaze follow her hand and knew that he had noticed, that he suspected what her original intention had been. His hand curled into a fist on the table. She caught her father’s gaze and quickly looked away from the knowing glint there.

“Reggie, will you pass me a pancake?” Julie said quickly, and was relieved when this started yet another playful, attention-grabbing argument between Reggie and Carlos.

They left as soon as all the dishes were washed and put away, taking Carlos with them so that their dad could drop him off at baseball practice on their way to Bobby’s. Luke lingered behind when everyone else headed out the front door, making an excuse about grabbing something from the studio really quick.

“Julie?” he said hesitantly, stopping her as she started up the stairs. She turned around and found that, two steps up, she was almost as tall as him. “I just wanted to tell you… I found something last night. In the studio. I really think you should see it.”

“What is it?” she asked. Obviously it was something of her mother’s; just about everything in there was her mother’s.

“There’s a song on the piano. I was reading it because, well…” He shrugged, but Julie knew what he meant. They had already written three songs together, and he had openly shared a bunch of his other songs with her. She guessed he probably hadn’t realized there might be something he shouldn’t help himself to. “Anyway, it’s for you. Your mom wrote it for you.”

“Oh.” Her chest felt tight suddenly, and her eyes burned.

“It’s really good,” he said softly, and his fingers brushed the back of her hand. She would have let him hold her hand, but she was frozen. “She was an amazing songwriter.”

It took her a second, but she nodded and spoke quietly. “Yeah. She was.”

“Are you going to be okay?” He asked; he looked concerned, and a little uncomfortable with how clearly emotional she was getting. “If you… if you want to wait, I can… I can be there for you… when you look at it.”

“I’ll be okay,” she promised him, genuinely touched that he would offer to be there, to witness what would probably be a very emotional experience for her. “Thanks, Luke. You should probably go. They’re waiting for you.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking like part of him didn’t want to go, and part of him couldn’t wait to be away from her and her emotions. “Yeah, I should go. I’ll see you later.”

She called his name when he was almost to the door, and he wheeled around to face her. “Just… try to keep your cool, okay? I don’t want you getting in trouble or getting hurt.”

The smile he flashed her was the super sweet one that made her stomach flutter. “I’ll do my best, but my best isn’t always very good.”

Then, he turned and walked out, leaving her alone on the stairs. She shook her head and made her way up to her room to grab her phone and change out of her pajamas. She took a quick shower, and thought about starting on some last minute homework, but then she realized that she was just putting off the inevitable.

She had texted Flynn about a dozen times since she and Luke had left her at her house on Friday night, but hadn’t received a response. She knew the only chance she had of getting Flynn to answer her would be to call; otherwise, she would have to take a walk down the block to her house and force her to talk to her.

Julie half expected Flynn not to answer the phone, and was already slipping on her sneakers, hunched over with the phone between her shoulder and her ear, but Flynn finally picked up with a short, “What?” about a second before she would have been sent to voicemail.

Julie straightened up quickly, her left foot half in, half out of her shoe. “Flynn, please don’t be mad at me.”

“I’m not mad, Julie!” Flynn shot back.

“Really? You sound pretty mad to me!”

“I’m not mad. I’m hurt. I’ve been there for you through everything! I’ve been patient and understanding and sympathetic this whole time! I’ve been _there_. Your dad has been there! But do you bring _me_ or him to the studio? Do you open up to us at all? No! But some senior boy you barely know anything about! Why Luke Patterson?”

Flynn said all of this very quickly, which Julie knew meant she was _very_ upset with her.

“I don’t know… I can’t explain it. It’s just… something about him.” Julie paused, and then for the second time in the one weekend she had known him, described Luke in a way that still surprised her. “He reminds me of my mom.”

Flynn was silent for a long time, and Julie would have wondered if she had hung up if she couldn’t hear her breathing.

“He _breathes_ music, Flynn,” she whispered. “Just like she did. We were in the studio for _hours_ after we left you. We wrote _two_ songs together. It was after five am when I went to bed and I don’t think he would have stopped writing long enough to notice the time if I hadn’t fallen asleep on him. Who does that sound like?”

Flynn’s only answer was the slight hitch in her breathing, and Julie knew it was because, yeah, that was exactly like her mom.

“He never knew my mom, so maybe that’s why it was easier to share it with him,” Julie said. “If you or my dad or Carlos went in there with me for the first time, you would all have your own memories of her there in that space. With him, I could just tell him what I was thinking and he listened, and he _got it_. Flynn, the first thing he did when we got in there was to pick up her favorite acoustic.”

Flynn gasped, a tearful sound, and Julie nodded even though Flynn couldn’t see her.

“He found a song she wrote,” Julie said. “It was on the piano, I guess. Just sitting there untouched. I haven’t gone to look at it yet, but he said she wrote it for me and I need you to forgive me, because I don’t think I can face this without you.”

This was different. This, a song that her mother had written specifically for her, wasn’t something that she could share with Luke. It had to be someone closer to the situation, someone who wouldn’t freak out if she broke down, someone who might actually hug her if she needed it. Her dad would be an okay choice, but he didn’t really _get_ music like Flynn could, like Luke definitely did.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Flynn said, and then hung up.

Julie pulled the phone from her ear, and shook her head.

Sure enough, five minutes later Flynn met Julie in her backyard, right outside the studio doors.

“Where’s your boyfriend?” Flynn asked.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Julie mumbled. She could admit to herself that Luke was cute, and that she liked it when he held her hand, and that she really wanted to touch his hair again, and that she really enjoyed their nights writing together, getting a glimpse inside his mind, but while she had known of him pretty much all her life, she had only _really_ known him since two nights ago. “My dad drove the boys to Bobby’s house to get the stuff that they left there.”

“Boys? Plural?” Flynn said. “What do you mean he brought them to get their stuff?”

“Yes, boys, plural. All three of them,” Julie said. “They were using Bobby’s basement as a sort of rehearsal space, so they have some equipment over there, and my dad is helping them haul it back over here.”

“Why is your dad bringing their stuff here?” Flynn asked.

Julie smiled and shook her head. “We’ve got some catching up to do.”

She pulled open the door and led Flynn into the studio. The boys had already done some rearranging. They had moved the couch Luke slept on so that it was directly under the window facing the house. They’d set the rug up under it just like her mom had, with the table directly in front. They hadn’t touched her mom’s instruments, so the piano was still across the room near the other window and the guitars were still hanging on the wall beside the couch.

In the middle of the room, almost exactly where the couch had once been, Alex’s drum set took up a good deal of space. To the left, Reggie’s bass sat on its stand and to the right, Luke’s electric guitar. Both of them were plugged into amps the boys had hauled down from the loft. In between the two, right in the center of the room, was Julie’s mic stand and the fancy white microphone her mom had gotten her for her fifteenth birthday. To the left of Reggie’s bass was Julie’s keyboard, the one that had been up in the loft since her mom had died.

On the table, Luke had left his songbook open on the very last page – he and Julie had been up late again writing, and Alex and Reggie had showed up early looking to take her dad up on his promise to help them get their stuff back from Bobby so she guessed he hadn’t had a chance to put it away. He almost always kept it in his guitar case when he wasn’t using it.

“I kind of joined their band,” Julie said helplessly. “And now this is our studio.”

“ _Julie_ ,” Flynn breathed, looking around with wide eyes and taking several steps inside.

“Oh, also,” she pointed at the couch, “Luke’s going to be sleeping there for… well, for the foreseeable future.”

Flynn stopped and turned to stare doubtfully at her. “Your dad is letting that very cute boy live here?”

Julie toyed briefly with the idea of pretending not to have noticed how cute Luke was, but she knew Flynn would see the change in her the second Luke was around. It had been two days, but already he was developing a habit of holding her hand, or of invading her personal space as if he simply couldn’t help himself. He had even done it in front of the other boys when they were setting up in here after they left Mona’s the day before. Not that she was complaining, of course, but it was difficult enough for her to pretend to be unaffected in front of him and the boys; she knew there was no way she could pull off a cool exterior in front of Flynn who knew her better than anyone.

“Yeah,” she said. “He’s a really good guy, Flynn. My dad likes him. He likes all three of them.”

Flynn didn’t say anything for a minute, just continued to look around. Then, she turned to Julie with a fierce look on her face.

“You may have ditched Double Trouble for Sunset Curve,” she said, “but you’re not ditching me for a new best friend, you understand?”

Julie rolled her eyes and laughed. “Duh.”

“You can’t ditch me for a boyfriend, either,” Flynn added. “I don’t care how cute he is or how dreamy his arms are. I’ll kill him.”

“He’s not my…” Julie trailed off and shook her head. “I’m not going to ditch you for anyone, Flynn. No one could ever replace you.”

“Good,” Flynn said, then smiled at her. “I think it’s really cool that you’re in Sunset Curve now! They were good before, but you guys were great together the other night!”

“Oh, it’s not Sunset Curve anymore,” Julie told her. “We haven’t decided on a name yet, but the guys all want to leave behind any ties to Bobby. Which sucks for Luke because they performed most of his best songs with Bobby.”

“That does suck,” Flynn agreed with a sympathetic frown. “But I’m sure he’ll come up with newer and better material.”

“We’re actually already working on it,” Julie admitted. “We’ve written three songs together the last two days.”

“Julie, that’s awesome!” Flynn cheered. “I’ll start brainstorming names for you! Oh! Once we come up with a name, we can start up an Instagram account! And a YouTube channel!”

Excited, she pulled out her phone and began to scroll through her apps. “Oh my God, Julie, these boys are so lucky to have us now. They never even made a single social media account for Sunset Curve. _How_ they got to be so popular is a mystery to me. Talent can only get you so far if you don’t bother with advertising!”

Julie laughed and quietly agreed with her, but slowly began to wander away to the piano. Sure enough, just like Luke had said, there was a song on top of it. She sat shakily on the bench and spread out the papers; there were four sheets and at the very bottom of the last page, a note in her mom’s tidy handwriting:

_Julie, you can do it  
Love Mom_

“Do you want me to come over there?” Flynn asked. Julie looked up and realized Flynn was still standing near Alex’s drums where she had left her.

She hesitated, and then nodded shakily.

Flynn crossed the room quickly and sat on the bench beside her, resting her head on Julie’s shoulder. After a moment of quietly reading, she said, “Are you going to play it?”

Her mother had composed it on the piano, had written all of the lyrics out over the composition so that Julie, no matter how long it took her to find it, could play it exactly as her mother wanted it played, and could feel exactly what she had wanted to portray. Instead of answering Flynn, she reached out with trembling fingers, and lifted the dusty fallboard. Looking down at the composition pages, she carefully placed her fingers on the appropriate keys and immediately felt at peace knowing that her fingers were exactly where her mother’s had been.

She took a deep breath, and began to play. And sang the words her mother had written for her.

They were exactly what she needed to hear, what she had needed for the past year.

_Wake up, wake up if it’s all you do  
Look out, look inside of you  
It’s not what you lost  
It’s what you’ll gain raising your voice in the rain  
Wake up your dream and make it true  
Look out, look inside of you  
It’s not what you lost  
Relight that spark, time to come out of the dark  
Wake up, wake up_

How was it that she had had this right here, so close at hand, all this time and had never worked up the nerve to just walk out into her mother’s studio to find it? And even once she had made it into the studio, she still hadn’t been the one to discover it, had been too afraid, too sad, to just walk over to her mother’s piano and see it. How was it that Luke was the one constantly finding ways to remind her of her mother and bring back the music?

The silence was deafening when she finished, and she felt Flynn’s arms come up around her shoulders. Julie scooped up the last page of her mother’s song, the one she had written on, and held it to her chest as she leaned the side of her head against Flynn’s and began to cry.

“Julie.” She looked up at the sound of her dad’s voice and saw through her tears that he was standing in the door, a bag slung over one shoulder and a guitar case over the other, with all three boys equally as laden down behind him. All four of them were staring at her, something close to awe in their expressions. “ _Mija_ , that was beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she managed, but her eyes met Luke’s. Flynn’s arms tightened around her, and she closed her eyes and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was posting daily for a while! Knew that wouldn't last forever, but it was a good run lol.  
> Work is getting hectic, which makes it harder to update, but I'll try not to let it go too long without an update!  
> I hope you guys like this chapter! Let me knooooowwwww <3  
> Oh, also, I think I aged Carlos down kind of a lot. I have no idea how old he was in the show, but I wanted him to be younger in my story. Lol


	10. Like a groupie hanging off of a rockstar.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang goes to school. Nobody has any game. Luke and Julie write another song. Carrie is a jerk, and Flynn is still the best friend ever.

“Should we go sit with them?” Flynn asked Julie quietly as they stood in the front of the lunch line. Luke, Reggie, and Alex were already seated at their usual table in the far corner of the cafeteria. Alex had his drumsticks tucked into the waistband of his light blue joggers and there was a brown paper bag on the table in front of him. Luke had a fresh notebook spread out on the table, and Reggie was poring over what looked like a math book and looking very stressed.

“I don’t know,” Julie whispered back, feeling ridiculous for how nervous she was.

Her dad had dropped her and Luke off at school just a few minutes before the first bell rang this morning, and they had said a quick hello to Alex and Reggie before they had all had to go their separate ways. They hadn’t tried to avoid being seen with her or anything, but Julie was suddenly feeling very uncertain about approaching them in the cafeteria.

They were only a year older than her and Flynn, but they were _seniors_. And while they weren’t overwhelmed with friends – Julie was pretty sure none of them actually had any good friends other than each other – they were well known because they were all good looking and in a talented band who were known for playing the Hollywood club scene despite the fact that they were all underage. They were _cool_. Julie didn’t know if they would want to actually hang out with her at school.

She and Flynn reached the front of the line and paid for their food. When she looked up again, Alex was reaching into his lunch bag and pulling out a stack of sandwiches. He tossed one to Luke, one to Reggie, and started to unwrap the third one for himself when he looked up, caught her eye, and smiled and beckoned her over. Luke and Reggie both looked up quickly when Alex said something. Reggie grinned at her and shouted something that she couldn’t make out, but that made Luke laugh and roll his eyes while Alex gave him a judgmental side-eye and several people at nearby tables glanced over at him. Luke just smiled at her and his eyes went soft when she smiled timidly back and wordlessly led Flynn over.

“Hey, Julie! Hey, Flynn!” Reggie said, looking so happy to see them both that Julie was instantly ashamed for being so afraid to approach them. “Would either of you happen to be in Algebra II?”

“I suck at math. Flynn’s going to be your girl for that one,” Julie told him.

Flynn rolled her eyes and sat next to Reggie, but Julie wasn’t fooled; Flynn loved any chance to show off how smart she was. “Okay, what do you need?”

“Hey,” Luke said, still smiling that adorable puppy smile at her as she sat down next to him.

“Hi,” she said, and nodded to his songbook. “Anything good?”

He shrugged. “It’ll be better once you put your spin on it.”

“You never ask _me_ to put _my_ spin on anything,” Alex complained sarcastically, and suddenly his drumsticks were out and tapping a quick and catchy rhythm on the table, dangerously close to Luke’s songbook. He smirked when Luke gave him a dirty look and pulled his songbook further away, closer to Julie. “Hey, Julie.”

“Hey, Alex.” She smiled as he shoved his drumsticks back into his waistband. “That was a fun beat.”

“Thanks.” He nodded happily to himself as he unwrapped his sandwich.

Julie leaned closer to him, across Luke, and spoke quietly. “Have you talked to Willie?”

Alex froze and choked on a bite of his sandwich, staring at Julie with wide eyes. Luke chuckled quietly and leaned in close to her ear. “Alex has no game.”

“What?” Julie said. It didn’t really seem like Alex would need a whole lot of game to talk to Willie, who had been obviously interested the other night.

“I don’t see you making any moves on anyone, _Lucas_ ,” Alex snapped.

Luke sat back and frowned at Alex, but Julie noticed how his gaze flicked to her a few times as she sat back in her seat too. Luke opened his mouth and those awkward, nervous stammering sounds came pouring out before he found his words. “You don’t have to make any moves, Alex. He already texted you. You just have to respond.”

“You left him on read?” Julie gaped at Alex. “But… you like him!”

“I told you. No game,” Luke said in a stage whisper.

“It’s so tiring being the only one with game here,” Reggie said, suddenly surfacing from his textbook.

“You have game?” Flynn said doubtfully.

“Reggie, don’t,” Alex pleaded.

“It embarrasses us when you embarrass yourself,” Luke said, leaning across the table to get his point across.

“Hah, jokes on you guys.” Reggie smirked at them proudly. “I don’t get embarrassed.”

“Reginald,” Alex groaned as Reggie reached down into his backpack and pulled out a white t-shirt.

“One t-shirt for you,” Reggie said, handing the shirt to Flynn. She unfolded it to reveal that it said Sunset Curve in curling black letters. “Size: beautiful.”

Luke covered his face in his hands and sighed dramatically as Alex banged his head on the table. Julie bit her lip and slapped her hand over her eyes as Flynn stared at Reggie in disbelief.

“This is Sunset Curve merch,” she said with a confused frown. “You guys disbanded. Sunset Curve isn’t a thing anymore.”

“That will just make it that much more valuable one day,” Reggie said proudly. Then he caught Luke’s scowl across the table and frowned. “No? Okay, you’re right.”

He snatched the shirt out of Flynn’s hands and tossed it over his shoulder without looking. It landed a good two feet to the left of the trash can, but he didn’t bother to pick it up. None of them did.

“Speaking of band names,” Flynn said loudly. “I have some thoughts.”

“Oooh, me too!” Reggie said.

“No, Reggie,” Julie, Luke, and Alex all said at once. They had been forced to listen to his suggestions for two hours last night before Alex had dragged him home. He’d been on a country kick for a few months, according to Luke, and all of his suggestions had leaned heavily in the country direction.

“Okay,” Flynn said, catching Julie’s eye and smiling. “Anyway, I was thinking since you guys have a new lead singer, you should lean on the fact that she’s a cute girl.”

“ _I’m_ the lead singer,” Luke said quickly, and Julie could tell it was more of a reflex than any sort of actual insult.

“No, you _were_ the lead singer,” Alex told him. “Julie’s better.”

“Yeah, she’s got the voice of an angel,” Reggie said.

“What? No, that’s not… I’m not…” Julie stopped before she really started rambling. “Luke, you’re amazing.”

Luke looked at her, and the indignance slid right off of his face. “Well, I mean, we could share lead.”

“Obviously,” Flynn said, sparing Julie from having to come up with an answer. “Your chemistry and the way your voices blend together was half of what made you guys so incredible the other night.”

Julie’s face grew warm when Flynn mentioned their _chemistry_ , and Luke looked at her and then quickly looked away.

“How about One Girl Three Dudes!” Reggie said, and grinned, clearly very proud of his suggestion.

“That is… certainly an option,” Flynn said diplomatically after a moment while all the rest of them stared at Reggie in abject horror. “Tell you what, we’ll all brainstorm and come up with suggestions, but that will be a backup.”

“I thought it was good,” Reggie mumbled dejectedly.

“Dude, it sounds like something they would have ordered on Pay Per View twenty years ago,” Alex said.

Julie, blushing at the implication, turned to Luke, planning to change the subject. He wasn’t paying any attention to their table anymore; he was scowling at something across the cafeteria. Julie followed his gaze and saw Bobby at a table full of boys. They were all laughing, but Bobby was looking right back at Luke with an equally distasteful glare.

Luke’s hands were balled up into fists on the table. Julie leaned close and pulled the songbook from under his elbow.

“Can I?” she asked, trying to distract him and tune out the sounds of Alex, Reggie, and Flynn bickering across the table.

His gaze snapped to her and his expression softened immediately as a small, grateful smile graced his lips. He gestured for her to read what he had been working on as he turned to the sandwich Alex had tossed him before she reached the table. “I already said you can read all my stuff.”

“I just wasn’t sure if that only covered songs you’d already written,” she said. She probably wouldn’t be willing to share with him every lyric that popped into her head, especially last night when she’d been stuck on a line and her brain kept wanting to write a lyric about a boy who hated sleeves.

“No,” he said through a mouthful of PB&J. “I got nothing to hide from you.”

She smiled and looked down. He had almost finished the first verse of a brand new song. She hummed thoughtfully and then reached out to steal the pen he had tucked behind his ear and jotted down a line.

“That’s sick,” he said appreciatively in her ear and she looked over to see that he was leaning in close, reading over her shoulder as she wrote. “I think that’s good for the verse. For the chorus, I was thinking something like this.”

He reached over and casually pulled Alex’s drumsticks out of his waistband to drum a quiet beat on the table as he sang softly. Alex spared him the briefest dirty glance, but otherwise did nothing to stop Luke from taking his sticks.

“Life is a risk, but I will take it.” He paused, frowned thoughtfully, and said “Something, something…. Come on, let’s run!”

He drew out the vowel on run, prolonged the note. Julie smiled, bobbing her head along with his vocals. She wrote down his first line, then paused and quietly sang, “Close my eyes and jump. Together, I think that we can make it.”

Luke beamed at her and nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, yeah, that’s great! … we can make it… come on let’s run!”

They passed the lunch hour this way, the five of them all together, but Luke and Julie with their heads bent close together as if they were alone in the studio working on a new song. When the bell rang, they almost had it finished. Luke scowled up at the ceiling.

“Any chance you would be willing to skip your next class and finish this?” he asked hopefully. At her unimpressed look, he deflated and nodded. “Yeah, I figured.”

Julie actually wouldn’t have minded skipping class. She had music next, which was her favorite class a year ago but had been something to dread ever since her mother’s death. If it was just a matter of skipping class and finishing a great song, she would probably have done it. The thing was, she knew if she started skipping class to hang out with Luke two days after they became friends her dad might begin to rethink encouraging this thing they had going.

“Sorry,” she said unapologetically as she gathered her books and got to her feet. Everyone else at the table followed her lead, but Luke stayed seated for a minute. “You’re not actually ditching, are you?”

He looked up at her with a smirk. “Worried about my attendance record?”

Julie rolled her eyes and waited for his answer.

“No, I’m not ditching. I have gym next. Gotta hit the weight room,” he said.

“Yeah, we don’t want Luke losing all this muscle definition,” Alex said, squeezing Luke’s exposed biceps as Luke began to gather his things. Luke only laughed and shook him off.

“Then he might have to start wearing sleeves,” Reggie said in a stage whisper.

Julie bit her lip and caught Flynn’s eye. “We wouldn’t want that.”

The boys all looked at Julie. Luke looked rather pleased with himself, but Reggie and Alex both had huge grins that made Julie fear that she would hear about that comment forever.

“Yeah, your existing fans would probably revolt,” Flynn said, and Julie was grateful to her for trying to help out, but she could tell by the boys’ faces that they weren’t going to let it go. Apparently Flynn could tell too because she grabbed Julie’s hand and began to pull her away. “Come on. We’re going to be late.”

“See you later, Julie,” Luke said.

“Bye,” Julie called over her shoulder.

“Oh my God, Julie,” Flynn breathed as they hurried away.

“I know, I know!” Julie whispered. “I didn’t mean to!”

Flynn was laughing now, and Julie frowned at her. “I’m sorry, it’s just… you’re freaking out over nothing! He was so happy you said that! He’s as into you as you’re into him. Maybe even more.”

“I never said…” Julie trailed off at Flynn’s incredulous look. Okay, so she had _kind of_ admitted to liking him back there, but she still hadn’t said the exact words.

They were almost to their music class when Flynn shook her head, laughing quietly again. She shrugged when Julie looked at her, silently demanding an explanation. “I was just thinking… I wonder how your dad will react when you and Luke start dating.”

“What makes you think we will?” Julie said, but she already knew, didn’t she? The way Luke had a tendency to touch her, to lock fingers with her, the way Julie looked at him when she hoped he wouldn’t notice, the same way she sometimes caught him looking at her. It was just that their situation was so new still and she wondered how long it would be before the novelty wore off.

“Please.” Flynn rolled her eyes. “He practically had his arm around you the entire time at lunch.”

“He was reading over my shoulder!” Julie said.

“And you were awfully comfortable just reaching over and grabbing that pen from his ear,” Flynn continued as if Julie had said nothing. “Oh, God. I bet you’re never going to see that boy wearing sleeves now.”

She was still laughing, and Julie was still red in the face, when they took their seats.

“Oh, look, it’s Julie!” Carrie called from the row behind them. The class was already pretty full, so Julie felt several pairs of eyes on her. “Julie, I didn’t realize you were so _close_ with Luke Patterson.”

So maybe Flynn wasn’t the only on who had noticed the way they had been so comfortable with each other at lunch. She felt her face grow even hotter, but she rolled her eyes and tried to ignore her.

“Typical,” Carrie said in a hushed voice that carried across the room. “She’s like a groupie hanging off a rockstar. Just wait until he’s done with her.”

Flynn stood up angrily and turned to face Carrie. “Groupies don’t usually get asked to join the hottest rising band, Carrie! But you wouldn’t know, would you? You’ve never actually been invited to join anything; your daddy’s always bought your way in, and he’s always bought your victories. Just like last weekend.”

Carrie laughed, but she was obviously shaken by Flynn’s accusations.

“Flynn,” Julie hissed, grabbing her best friend by the elbow and pulling her back down to her seat. “Leave it alone.”

Mrs. Harrison entered the room then, and called the class to order. Carrie sent them one last sneering look before Flynn complied and dropped, seething, into her chair.

“Hey, Julie!”

Julie turned around at the voice behind her as she headed towards her locker after music class. She was surprised to see Nick, Carrie’s ex-boyfriend who was also in their music class, approaching her.

“Hey, Nick,” she said. She wondered if she had left something behind in class, but she had her book bag and her phone was still in her back pocket. “What’s up?”

“I was at Battle of the Bands last weekend,” Nick said as he fell into step beside her. “And I just wanted to let you know that you were really, really great up there.”

“Oh. Thanks,” Julie said. “I had a lot of fun with the guys.”

“Yeah, that was pretty clear to see.” He smiled at her. “So, is it true you’re joining Sunset Curve?”

“Um, yeah.” She bit her lip and fidgeted with the strap of her bag. She wished Flynn were here, but their last classes were on opposite sides of the school, so they had gone their separate ways after music. “But that’s not actually our name anymore.”

“Really? What’s the name, then? So I can spread the word.” He was still smiling at her, expectantly awaiting her answer.

“Well, we don’t actually have one yet,” she admitted awkwardly. She had a suspicion that he was flirting with her, and it wasn’t long ago that she would have been really excited about the possibility, but all she could think about now was Luke. “But it’s going to be great.”

“No doubt about that, Molina,” Nick said.

They rounded a corner and Julie faltered in her step when she saw a sleeveless boy leaning against her locker. Nick noticed, too, and she saw him frowning when she looked up at him. “Um, I’ll see you later, Nick.”

“Yeah, see you around,” Nick mumbled as she walked away from him.

Luke watched her approach, and his gaze flicked back behind her a couple times, but she kept her eyes on him. “What are you doing here?”

“I think I finished the chorus,” he told her, and she saw the he was clutching his songbook tightly in his hands. “Wanted to know what you think.”

She smiled at him and cocked her head as she reached out to prise the book from his fingers. “How did you know where my locker was?”

“I saw you this morning.” He shot her a teasing smile then, shrugging. “You know, we did come to school together.”

“Right,” she said, but she could have sworn they had already parted ways when she went to her locker this morning. She started to flip to their song, and then realized that she had lost precious time talking to Nick and handed it back to Luke. “Sing it to me.”

“What, the whole song?” Luke asked with another small smirk.

“I don’t think we have time for that,” Julie said as she gently pushed him to the side so that she could access her locker. “Just the chorus.”

“Alright,” he said and slipped effortlessly into song.

_Life is a risk, but we will take it  
Close my eyes and jump  
Together, I think that we can make it  
C’mon let’s run_

_And rise through the night, you and I  
We will fight to shine together, bright forever  
  
_

“And then I was thinking we could just repeat that,” he said, and demonstrated.

_And rise through the night, you and I  
We will fight to shine together, bright forever_

Julie smiled, bobbing her head and tapping her foot as she rifled through her locker listening to him. She closed her locker just as he finished singing, and she beamed up at him.

“It sounds so good,” she said.

“Yeah?” he asked. “You don’t think it’s cheesy or anything?”

“Cheesy? No!” She shook her head emphatically. “It was perfect. I loved how you went up at the end. _Bright foreverrrrr_.”

He broke out into a huge grin. “Cool, cool. I’m glad you liked it.”

“Luke, I _loved_ it,” she assured him.

“Good,” he said, holding his songbook in one hand and shoving his other hand in his pocket. “Well, um, that’s all I wanted, so…”

“Oh, right,” she said. “Well, I guess I’ll see you after school.”

“In like an hour,” Luke said.

“Yeah,” Julie said with an awkward wave. “Bye.”

“See you,” he said, and then they both started walking in the same direction.

Julie laughed and shook her head. “Oh my God, we did not just live that cliché.”

“I think we did.” He smirked at her and rubbed the back of his neck as they settled into step together. “I’m headed to Trig.”

“Geometry,” Julie said.

“Math blows,” Luke groaned.

“Oh my God, it’s the worst,” Julie agreed. “Let me guess, you like English.”

“Writing assignments are not the worst part of my day,” he admitted with a small smile. “Hey, um, speaking of which, I wanted to tell you… I really like writing with you. I think that you… well, I think you make me a better writer.”

Julie stopped outside of her classroom and turned to him with a wide, slow smile still spreading on her face. Subconsciously, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear; his gaze followed the movement. “I think we make each other better, actually.”

His soft answering smile took her breath away and she realized quite suddenly that her earlier thought, while technically still a valid concern, probably wasn’t going to be much of an issue. She couldn’t see these feelings going away anytime soon, not even once the novelty had worn off, not even after they had been writing and playing together for decades.

The warning bell rang and Julie jumped. “Oh! Um, this is me.”

Luke laughed and pointed at the door across the hall. “And this is me.”

Julie shook her head. “I cannot believe we’ve had class directly across the hall from each other all year and never noticed.”

“Yeah, well, I usually get here last minute and leave the second the bell rings,” Luke told her.

She nodded her understanding. “Math.”

“Math,” he agreed with a grimace.

They both ducked into their classes just as the tardy bell rang. Even though it was her least favorite class, Julie couldn’t remember ever being more excited for Geometry to be over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yoooooooooooo, thanks for reading! I hope you guys like this chapter! :)   
> Let me know!


	11. You're like real life heart-eye emojis.

It was easy to pretend she and Luke were just friends when they were rehearsing with Alex and Reggie, the four of them arguing over chords and melodies and jamming together. Well, it wasn’t exactly _easy_ , considering Alex and Reggie both _knew_ that there were things being left unsaid and they both liked to draw attention to Luke’s biceps at the most inconvenient moments for Julie. So, no, it wasn’t easy. But it was manageable.

It was really when they were alone that it was difficult to act normal. They were still constantly writing songs together, staying up later than they probably should – on Luke’s fifth day with them, her dad had gone ahead and set that curfew he had jokingly threatened when Julie wandered downstairs for school in leggings and a baggy sweatshirt, dark circles under her eyes after only five hours of sleep.

Now Julie had to be in bed by 10:30 on weeknights and she was only allowed to hang out in the studio after her homework was all done. Of course, this didn’t stop her and Luke from texting song lyrics back and forth for at least an hour after she left him in the studio. Her dad hadn’t yet set a strict curfew on the weekends, but on more than one occasion he had stumbled out to the studio around two am and told them to wrap things up.

At first, Julie had worried that Luke would be put off by this, but he didn’t really seem to mind. Flynn pointed out that it wasn’t exactly like he could complain; he was technically living rent-free under her dad’s roof and that meant he had to follow her dad’s rules. That, and Flynn thought that most of their late-night songwriting sessions weren’t really all about the music anymore.

“What is he going to say?” Flynn had said, her voice dropping into a poor imitation of Luke’s voice. “But Mr. Molina… I mean, Ray, I wasn’t done making excuses to touch your daughter.”

Flynn wasn’t that far off, Julie thought. There had been a few times, sometimes late at night, sometimes right after Alex and Reggie headed out, that she and Luke had been sitting on the couch writing and she had been certain he was about to kiss her. He never actually did, though.

Their three best friends weren’t the only ones who saw it, either. Nick still usually took the time to talk to her after music class, and always left her when he noticed that Luke was always waiting for her at her locker. After the third consecutive day of this, Nick had stopped her outside of the music room and asked her point blank if she and Luke were dating.

She had hesitated maybe a few seconds too long before she shook her head. “No. No. We’re friends.”

Nick had stared at her for a second before he nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say. The thing is, friends don’t look at each other like that, Molina.”

“Like what?” she had wondered aloud.

“Like the way you look at him, and the way he looks right back at you,” Nick had told her. He laughed and shook his head. “You’re like real-life heart-eye emojis.”

Julie had laughed awkwardly and dismissed it, but then when she had rounded the corner and seen him there, waiting for her, looking right at her, her heart had fluttered, and she’d wondered if maybe Nick was right after all.

Her dad saw it, too. He never came right out and mentioned it to her, but she often caught him watching them at dinner. It was always awkward when he made a point to make direct eye contact with her after she and Luke brushed hands not entirely by accident over a serving bowl, but at least he never seemed to give Luke that look. Probably he knew Luke would die of embarrassment if he knew that Julie’s dad noticed those little touches, and that Luke would probably back off at least a little bit.

Julie’s dad liked Luke. A lot. It may not have been an ideal situation for there to be romance brewing between his daughter and the boy living in the studio, but Julie knew her dad wouldn’t stand between them. If anything ever actually happened.

In fact, Julie suspected that her dad actively _wanted_ for her and Luke to start dating; he may even potentially have thought that they were already secretly dating.

It was a Friday afternoon; Luke had been staying there for about two months. They were in the studio, as usual, only Alex and Reggie hadn’t come over at all today because Alex had _finally_ made plans with Willie and Reggie’s parents had told him at the last minute that they needed him to watch his baby sister.

Her dad knocked on the studio door to announce his presence; they looked up from the piano keys. They were seated together on the bench composing a new song. Her dad gave her that now-familiar knowing look. She had to admit to herself that it wasn’t strictly necessary for them to be sitting so close together. Honestly, it wasn’t even totally necessary for Luke to be helping her with this part; she was leaps and bounds better than him at piano composition and they had on several occasions separated to compose their own pieces for the same song, hers on the piano, his on guitar, only to come together to compare and tweak.

“Yes, Papi?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at him when he didn’t say anything.

“I have to run out and shoot a last minute event. Mitchell was supposed to cover it, but he’s stuck in traffic and it looks like he’ll be very late getting there,” he said. “I’ll be back pretty late, and Carlos is spending the night at his friend’s house.”

“Oh, okay,” Julie said, suddenly feeling both nervous and excited. She spent a lot of time alone with Luke. _A lot of time_. But she never felt truly alone with him, not with the knowledge that her dad and her little brother were just a short distance away in the main house and could walk down to where they were in a matter of seconds.

“I left some money on the counter if you want to order food. Or there’s the _arroz con pollo_ your tia dropped off yesterday,” he said. “You’ll, uh, be okay?”

He looked swiftly between her and Luke, and she felt Luke shift away from her as if he had finally noticed that her dad knew _something_ was up.

“Yes, Papi,” she said quietly. “We’ll be okay.”

“Alright. Well, call me if you need anything. It’s not far away,” he said, and lingered awkwardly for a moment. It looked like he was contemplating saying something, and Julie wasn’t sure what it was but something told her she would prefer he didn’t say it. “Goodnight, Luke.”

“Night,” Luke said hurriedly, and Julie hadn’t heard him sound that nervous around her dad since their very first meeting. He’d definitely caught on to her dad’s suspicions.

He didn’t meet her gaze after her dad left, instead fidgeting with the pen in his hand and absently playing a simple melody on the piano with his other hand. She bit her lip and cleared her throat. “So, um, where were we?”

“Yeah, I think if we did something like this…” he played a few notes and sang the lyrics over them. “I think that could be cool. And then we let Alex loose on a killer drum solo.”

“That sounds great,” Julie agreed, and suddenly everything was normal again.

-

“Are you ready to eat?” she asked after a couple hours. Luke was almost always ready to eat, but he had a tendency to get so focused on their songwriting that he would completely forget to eat if she didn’t bring it up.

“Yeah, for sure,” he said immediately. They were in a pretty good spot with the composition; Julie was confident that the song was just about ready to show Alex and Reggie for their suggestions, but she knew Luke would want to run through it at least twice more. “Did you want to eat the leftovers, or what?”

She hummed thoughtfully. “What if we order from that Thai place on the beach by Reggie’s house?”

“Oh, yeah!” Luke threw his head back and sighed, already imagining what he would eat.

“Come on, I think we have a menu in the house,” she said, and grabbed his hand to pull him out of the studio. She dropped it when they were in the kitchen to rifle through the take-out drawer for the menu. “Oh, hold on. I think my phone is upstairs.”

“What does your room look like?” Luke blurted out as she started up the stairs. She turned around to see that he had followed her, but was standing on the other side of the banister looking at her with wide, desperate eyes as if the question had been nagging at him for a very long time.

“What?” She frowned. “Um, it’s just like a normal girl’s room, I guess.”

Luke smiled awkwardly and tilted his head to the side. “I’ve never seen a girl’s room before.”

“Oh. Right.” She had suspected before she knew him that he had never really dated before, but Alex and Reggie had openly and enthusiastically confirmed her suspicion on several occasions when the topic hadn’t even been remotely at hand. “Do you, um, want to see it?”

“Yeah,” he said eagerly, and started up the stairs after her. He paused, then, second-guessing himself. “I mean, if that’s cool with you.”

“What? Yeah! Of course! Why wouldn’t it be?” Julie said, but her stomach was flipping wildly and she was suddenly terrified that she hadn’t cleaned her room that morning despite the fact that she always kept her room pretty neat.

She turned and led him up the stairs, trying to act like she wasn’t freaking out inside as she opened the door and pulled him inside after her. He stopped in the doorway and looked around as if he were taking stock, comparing her room to his imagination. It made her wonder how often he had thought about her room, how much of the limited time they weren’t together he had lain there on the couch in the studio and wondered about her surroundings.

“I knew it was purple,” he mumbled to himself.

“What?” she asked.

“Oh, I… the walls,” he said, hunching his shoulders awkwardly. “I can, um, I can see your room from the studio.”

When she gasped in horror, he looked up and his mouth fell open in shock.

“No, no, no!” he said quickly and pointed to the far side of her room where there was a picture collage, mostly of her and Flynn, some of her family, a lot of her mom, and a few newer ones of her boys. “I can only see this corner here. And it’s not like I… I don’t _look_ or anything. It’s just sometimes… when I’m lying down… I can see it. Just that tiny sliver. And depending on the time of day, or if you’ve got the overhead lights on or just the lamp, the paint looks different. Sometimes it’s almost pink, but sometimes it’s more grey.”

“Oh.” She took a deep, calming breath. She should have known that he could see into her room. Hadn’t she occasionally stood at that very window and looked down at the studio to catch a glimpse of him? Hadn’t she seen him fresh out of the shower, shirtless, early in the morning before school a few times? It seemed like his curious gazing had revealed far less than hers, she thought gratefully and shamefully.

“I swear I’m not like trying to catch a glimpse of anything,” Luke told her, eyes wide and sincere.

“No, no, I get it,” she said, blushing. _She_ was the one trying to catch glimpses. And sometimes she succeeded. “I can see into the studio, too. I should have realized.”

“You can?” he asked, but Julie could tell that he had put two and two together when she hadn’t. He had known that if he could see into her room then she could see into the studio.

“Oh my God,” she breathed. “Are you… Are you serious right now?”

His brow furrowed, genuinely confused. “About what?”

“Are you walking around shirtless all the time with your stupid wet hair on purpose because you know that I can see you?” she demanded. It was that stupid comment she had made about his arms at lunch, the one that Alex and Reggie always teased her about. That was what had put the thought in his mind, she just knew it.

Instead of looking ashamed, he smiled at her. “I mean, it sounds like you’ve enjoyed the view.”

“You’re such a jerk,” she said without heat. In fact, she should probably be thanking him. He was right; she had thoroughly enjoyed the view. “What do you want to eat?”

“What?” he asked, but followed her when she snatched her phone off her bed and marched out of the room.

They went downstairs and Julie thrust the menu at him as she dialed the phone number. Bemused, all he could do was point at his order when she started talking to the person on the other end.

Once she hung up, she turned to Luke. “It’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll go ride down and pick it up,” he offered. He had a bike, but he didn’t often ride it these days because he preferred to walk next to Julie.

“Okay.” She handed him the money her dad had left on the counter.

“I guess I’ll be right back,” he said, but he hesitated at the front door and walked back to her. “Julie, you’re not really mad at me, are you?”

She glared up at him, but softened quickly when she saw how worried he was. He was right. She wasn’t mad him.

“No,” she said quietly, looking at her feet. “I’m embarrassed.”

“Julie,” he whispered, and then his hand was on her chin, tilting her head up to look at him. She should have been used to the sight of him so close to her by now. It really shouldn’t take her breath away anymore when he was always getting so close to her during their songwriting sessions. “Why are you embarrassed? I’m the one who was parading around half naked. On purpose. Because I _wanted_ you to look.”

He had a point. But she was still feeling all unsteady from embarrassment. Or was that just because of him? Because the conversation they were having was unlike any they had ever had before? Because they were dangerously close to confessing the feelings they were both so bad at hiding?

“Look, I’m gonna go get the food,” Luke said softly. “I’ll be back in like forty minutes. And then, if you want to, we can talk some more. About our, uh, views. If you want. If not, that’s cool too.”

She smiled timidly. Luke was always so uncomfortable with anything involving feelings, but he was trying so hard for her. She nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay,” he repeated, and his hand dropped from her chin as he backed away from her. “Okay, I’ll be right back.”

“Bye,” she said, and then he was gone.

It had been a long time since she was truly alone. Since way before Luke started staying in the studio. Probably since before her mom died. She had expected to enjoy the quiet, but she only found herself missing him the moment the door closed behind him.

After a few minutes of trying, and failing, to entertain herself, she made her way back out to the studio. Was it only two months ago that she couldn’t bring herself to set foot in here? And now here she was unable to stay away because this was where Luke was more often than not.

She sat down on the couch, the comfortable one where he slept, and where they wrote most of their songs together. His songbook lay forgotten on the table in front of her. She picked it up and began to flip through it. Sometimes he started songs, decided they weren’t very good, gave up, and didn’t mention them to Julie until she found them and took it upon herself to finish.

Instead of a new song, she found a missing page. Had he been so unhappy with a song that he tore it out of his songbook and threw it away? He never did that, no matter how bad he thought the song he was working on was.

His Trigonometry textbook was on the ground next to the table. She remembered him tossing it on the floor when she had walked in this afternoon. She’d thought it was strange because there was plenty of room on the table for it, but she had let it go because he had wanted to jump right into the composition.

There was a page sticking out of the textbook, she noticed. It wasn’t the bright white loose leaf paper she would expect if it was just his notes, but the yellowed shade that matched his beloved songbooks. Curious, because _what was he hiding from her_ , she picked up the textbook and pulled the paper out.

At first glance, it looked just like any song he had started and not gotten very far with. He had a tendency to get through a full verse, leave a blank space, jot a line or two, leave more space, and scrawl some more thoughts. Either he would go back later and fill in the gaps, or she would.

She took a deep, shaky breath as she started to read. It was a love song.

_Step into my world_

_Bittersweet love story bout a girl_

_Shook me to the core_

_Voice like an angel, never heard before_

She stopped, her heart doing that fluttery thing it did so often now. Didn’t Reggie and Alex always say she sang like an angel? And didn’t Luke always laugh quietly and agree?

_We say we’re friends_

They definitely said they were friends, but hadn’t they just all but admitted that they were basically just playing pretend?

_You’re more to me, we’re everything_

Her breath was coming out in uneven gasps. She felt exactly the same way about him.

_You set me free_

_You and me together is more than chemistry_

_Love me as I am_

_I’ll hold your music here inside my hands_

He did hold her music, didn’t he? Hadn’t she told him that very first night that he had brought the music back to her life?

_You’re my brightest burning star_

Heart hammering, she picked up the pen and started writing, filling in the gaps with the things she had thought about him, things she had only dreamed of saying to him. When she was finished, she folded the paper and slipped it back into his textbook right where he had left it. Maybe she would bring it up to him when he got back and they talked about their _views_ , or maybe she would let him find it himself. Either way, she was seriously keyed up waiting for him.

She laid back on the couch, her head where she knew Luke rested his every night, and looked out the window. She could see into her bedroom. Not very much, as Luke had promised. Just that one spot on the wall. The paint looked almost grey. She smiled, imagining Luke laying here at night thinking about her. She really couldn’t wait for him to get home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayyyy it's been a while and I'm so sorry about it. Life is really putting me through it right now.   
> I hope you enjoyed this, and I hope it was at least somewhat worth the wait!   
> Let me know what you think! <3


	12. It really wasn't a big deal.

She woke up confused and disoriented. It was dark, and she was still out in the studio. She must have fallen asleep on the couch waiting for Luke to get back. When she looked at her phone and realized how late it was, she was nearly overcome with worry. He had been gone more than two hours.

She was about to call him when she heard shuffling footsteps approaching the door. Her heart hammered fearfully in her chest. It swung open and there was a grunt, and a pained gasp, and a muffled apology as the lights flipped on.

Luke was there, but she was surprised to see that Alex was with him. And between them, an arm over each of their shoulders for support, was Reggie. All three of them were covered in a light sheen of sweat.

“Oh my God, Reggie!” She jumped to her feet and rushed over. He was bleeding so profusely from the nose that there was a red streak all the way down the front of his white t-shirt to his waist. The flesh beneath both of his eyes was already turning black in the way that meant his nose was definitely broken. She wanted to reach out and help Luke and Alex bring him inside, but she could tell by the way he was leaning on them that it wasn’t just his nose that was hurt.

“Hey, Jules,” he gasped. “Sorry ‘bout all this.”

“Don’t you dare apologize!” Julie said firmly, and turned to Luke and Alex. “Get him to the couch. I’ll go get some towels and ice.”

She ran up to the house before either of them could respond, and was back in only a couple minutes. Luke was kneeling on the ground in front of the couch, trying to carefully take Reggie’s blood-spattered shirt off of him while Alex was helping Reggie tilt his head forward so the blood didn’t go down his throat at the same time that Reggie was trying to stuff toilet paper in his nostrils to staunch the bleeding. It wasn’t going so well because Reggie kept wincing and jerking his head every time Luke accidentally touched his side, which made more blood spurt from his nose.

“Shit, Reg,” Luke mumbled. “I might have to cut this off you if you can’t stay still.”

“You’re hurting me, Luke,” Reggie said gruffly.

“I’m trying to _help_ you,” Luke said, and then glanced over his shoulder when he heard Julie approach. His worried eyes brightened a bit when he saw the first aid kit in her hands. “Got scissors in there?”

“I think so.” She set the towels on the table and opened the kit and rummaged through it for a second before she found a pair of medical scissors and handed them to him.

“This is my favorite shirt,” Reggie joked weakly.

“Shut up,” Alex said, taking the wad of toilet paper from Reggie’s hand and tossing it to the side. “And stop with the toilet paper. I told you you need to let it bleed.”

“Put this on your nose, Reggie,” Julie said gently, handing him a small ice pack. “It will help with the swelling. And try to pinch it to stop the bleeding.”

“Ow,” Reggie said softly as he did as she instructed.

“Sorry,” Luke, Alex, and Julie all said in tandem.

“Not your fault.” Reggie groaned and put his other hand gingerly to his left side.

Julie could barely bite back her gasp when Luke finally got the shirt cut away to reveal the bruises already forming on Reggie’s side. She knew she didn’t do a very good job of hiding her reaction when Luke met her gaze and slid his hand into hers. She did her best to control her expression as she dropped to her knees beside Luke and put her hand on Reggie’s leg.

She wanted to ask if he was okay, but she knew that was the wrong thing to say. Obviously he wasn’t okay. She wanted to ask what had happened, but she wasn’t sure that would be okay either. Instead, she took a deep breath and shook her head.

“Reggie, you look like such a badass right now.”

He looked down at her. After a moment, he laughed. And immediately cried out in pain and clutched at his side.

Julie winced and bit her lip. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to make you laugh!”

He waved a hand at her, silently telling her it was okay. She was surprisingly steady as she reached for one of the towels she had dropped on the table.

“Luke, will you hand me the bag of peas?” Alex asked.

Luke turned around and picked up the bag, giving Julie a questioning look as he handed it to Alex, who held it to a knot that was beginning to form on the side of Reggie’s head.

“Frozen veggies are better than actual ice because they won’t melt everywhere,” Julie told him, mostly focused on trying to wipe the blood off of Reggie’s chest, but a lot of it had already dried and wouldn’t budge.

“Fair enough,” Luke said and reached for a second bag, which he held up to Reggie’s side. Reggie winced violently and gasped at either the pain or the cold.

“I need to wet this,” Julie mumbled and then jumped up and rushed to the bathroom.

“Here, Reg. Hold this for a second,” she heard Luke say softly. “I’ll be right back.”

She met his gaze in the mirror when he followed her into the bathroom. He closed the door behind him as she flipped the tap and waited for the water to warm up.

“Are you okay?” he asked her quietly.

“What do you mean, am I okay?” she said, rolling her eyes. “What about Reggie? Is he okay?”

Luke was quiet for a minute, mulling over his answer before finally he sighed. “I don’t know.”

“What happened to him, Luke?” she asked, sniffling.

“Reggie doesn’t come from a very happy family,” Luke told her quietly, and shrugged helplessly. “That’s all I can say… The rest is his to share if he wants to.”

“I think I should call my tía,” Julie said. She was a nurse, and Julie was pretty sure they could use a nurse about now. “I feel like he needs his ribs wrapped and I don’t know about you and Alex, but I wouldn’t even begin to know how to do that.”

Luke frowned; Tía Victoria wasn’t the biggest fan of him living here and she wasn’t shy about it. It wasn’t that she didn’t like him. She just didn’t think it was appropriate for a boy, especially one who looked like him and looked at Julie the way he did, to have so much time alone with her niece.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he said after the briefest hesitation. “But you should probably call your dad, too, because you know she will and he’ll freak out.”

Julie already had her phone out and was dialing Tía Victoria’s number. “You’re right. Can you call him?”

“Yeah, okay,” Luke said.

Her dad got there first, and rushed into the studio looking as concerned as if it was his own child lying broken on the couch.

“I’m sorry, Ray,” Reggie said when Julie’s dad suddenly appeared in front of him. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for, Reggie?” Julie asked.

Tears formed in Reggie’s eyes and he tried to sniffle, but the bloody nose made it both impossible and painful to try. “I ruined everyone’s night,” he whimpered.

“You didn’t ruin anything, Reggie,” Julie’s dad said, placing a gentle hand on Reggie’s shoulder, which was one of the few places that didn’t seem to pain him. “I wasn’t even supposed to be working tonight.”

“But…” His attention shifted when Alex, still holding the bag of peas to the side of Reggie’s head, walked around the back of the couch to perch on the arm of the couch next to him. “Alex! You were on a date! What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here.”

“Shut up, Reggie,” Alex said very gently. “You’re my best friend. You’re more important than a first date.”

“And… Julie, Luke…” They were both back to kneeling in front of him, each holding one of his hands again, and Luke had resumed holding the bag of corn to his side. Julie had managed to wipe of most of the blood on his chest with a warm damp cloth just a minute or two before her dad arrived. “I don’t know what you were doing, but it must have been better than this.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Luke mumbled, letting go of Reggie’s hand and standing so he was leaning over Reggie. He put his hand on the back of Reggie’s neck and gently tilted his head to make proper eye contact. “Nothing is more important to any of us than being here for you right now.”

“He’s right, Reggie,” Julie said, squeezing his hand. “We love you.”

Her tía arrived at that moment, and they all backed away to give her some space. She looked him over for a moment, poking and prodding, and making little humming sounds every few moments. Before long, she stood up and turned to face the rest of the group.

“Let’s get him into the house,” she said. “He doesn’t have a concussion, and I don’t think anything is broken but the nose, but he’ll be more comfortable in the guest room.”

“Come on, boys,” Julie’s dad said, and he, Luke and Alex, helped Reggie to stand.

With her dad there, it seemed to be easier for them to help him move around than it had been before. Julie couldn’t imagine how difficult it had been for them to get him all the way here. Had they dragged him the whole way? It was no wonder his side hurt so bad.

“ _Mija_.” Her tía stopped her when she made to follow the boys out of the studio. “Do you know what happened to him?”

Julie hesitated before shaking her head.

“If you know something, you should tell me,” her tía said. “We’re going to help him, but we need to know if he’s in trouble.”

“I don’t know what happened,” Julie said. “But I _think_ it had something to do with his parents.”

Her tía nodded grimly; she didn’t look very surprised.

“He’ll be okay, right Tía?” Julie asked. “He’ll be alright?”

“Of course he will, _mija_ ,” her tía said soothingly, sliding an arm around her shoulder. “Come on, let’s go inside.”

Luke was just coming out of the back door as they approached the house.

“Hey,” he said, giving her tía an uncomfortable nod as he stopped in front of Julie. “I’ll be right back. I’m just grabbing him a shirt.”

To Julie’s knowledge, and she thought she was pretty accurate, Luke only had about seven shirts. One of them was a really ugly purple long sleeved shirt that was way too big for him, only two had short sleeves, and the rest were all his normal, everyday sleeveless options. He tended to compensate for the lack of sleeves when they were in school by wearing a flannel she was pretty sure he stole from Reggie’s closet or one of three truly hideous oversized jackets he owned.

She wondered which shirt he would bring back for Reggie, and tried to remember if Luke had done laundry recently. She only hoped Reggie didn’t get stuck in the purple monstrosity.

He was seated on the edge of the bed in the guest room off the side of the kitchen when Julie and her tía entered the room, staring blankly at the wall as if he were trying desperately to pretend this wasn’t his life right now.

“Okay,” Tía Victoria said, voice calm and soothing as she approached the bed. “Let’s get your side wrapped.”

Luke walked into the room when she was on her second pass around Reggie’s torso. She saw the pain in Luke’s eyes when Reggie winced and gasped. He came to stand beside her against the wall, his arm brushing hers. She was holding Alex’s hand tightly; they were both trying not to react to Reggie’s pain. It made her smile when she saw that Luke had grabbed a sleeveless shirt for Reggie.

Her dad stood at the end of the bed watching as her tía took care of Reggie. When she was finished wrapping his ribs and had moved on to his nose and the knot on the side of his head, her father cleared his throat.

“Reggie, we need to know what happened to you,” he said quietly.

Reggie looked over at him with just his eyes – Tía Victoria was holding his head firmly in place – and he frowned. “It was nothing.”

“Come on, Reg,” Luke muttered, just loud enough for Reggie to hear him. “They just wanna help.”

It struck Julie as ironic that Luke was the one encouraging Reggie to open up to adults. It warmed her heart to think that he had come so far from that first morning when he couldn’t even meet her father’s eyes; now he trusted him implicitly. Reggie’s gaze shifted and he found his three people there against the wall, and he sighed.

“My parents fight a lot,” Reggie said, looking resigned. “Usually it’s just about money. Sometimes it gets really bad, but it’s been… decent lately. They were going out tonight, so they told me I needed to babysit. Only, right before they left, my mom said something that set my dad off. They started screaming and throwing stuff, the usual. I had Sammie in our room. She was crying, and I was trying to calm her down, but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t stop. And it was just setting my dad off even more. He came barging in, started in on me, saying that if I couldn’t even get my little sister to stop crying, what good was I? Then he started screaming at her to stop crying. Of course, that didn’t work. So my mom came in and tried to take her from me. He pushed her, and she fell. And then I told him to stop, and he started screaming at me, and throwing things at me. My mom got up and she took Sammie and she just… left. He kept going. It felt like forever. Then he left. He’s probably at a bar getting wasted.”

“Reggie,” her dad said gently. He moved around to the side of the bed and sat down on the edge. He put a hand on Reggie’s shoulder again. “You know nothing that happened tonight was your fault, right?”

Reggie’s face was screwed up trying not to cry. He nodded, but none of them were convinced. “It really wasn’t a big deal.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he repeated firmly. “Children cry, sometimes they’re inconsolable. It isn’t your responsibility to stop the crying just because it upsets your father. It isn’t your job to protect your mother from your father. It’s your father’s job not to be a threat to her. It isn’t your job to calm your parents. It’s their job to keep their calm in front of you. It’s their job to take care of you. It’s their job to love you unconditionally. It’s their job to protect you.”

Reggie tried to sniffle again – his nose had stopped bleeding, but Julie was sure it was still painful and hard to breathe. He coughed lightly, and nodded. “I know,” he whispered.

“I’m going to get him some water,” Alex said and ducked quickly out of the room.

Julie and Luke both watched him go; Julie suspected that Alex running off had more to do with getting his own emotions under control than getting water. Luke caught her eye, and she knew that she was right. She could only imagine how Alex felt, listening to her dad talk about parents loving their children unconditionally when he was so certain that his parents wouldn’t love him anymore when they learned he was gay.

She felt her eyes well with tears and frowned, trying to blink them back. All she wanted was to keep all of her boys safe and happy and loved and supported.

Next to her, Luke shifted the shirt to his other hand so that he could slide his hand into hers and link their fingers. He gave her hand a comforting squeeze, and Julie breathed a quiet sigh and leaned against him.

“I don’t want you to worry about any of this tonight, okay, Reggie?” her dad said in that soft, soothing dad voice of his. “You have a place to stay here as long as you need it.”

It was more or less what he had said to Luke two months ago, and Julie knew that Luke remembered because he gently squeezed her hand. Julie suspected it was more of a reflex than an intentional tightening of his fingers because he was staring at her dad with an almost overwhelming amount of awe and appreciation. She thought she understood what he was thinking; she had known her father’s selfless love and acceptance all her life but these boys hadn’t been so fortunate in their parents.

“Thank you,” Reggie said in a choked voice.

She squeezed Luke’s hand back, and heard him take a deep, steeling breath.

“Are you sure we can’t take you to the hospital?” her tía asked hopefully. “We can do a more thorough check and we can get everything documented.”

“No,” Reggie said immediately. “Thanks, but no. I can’t… we don’t have insurance. And I’m going to be eighteen in a month. Documentation wouldn’t really do any good at this point.”

Her tía looked like she wanted desperately to argue – even though he was turning eighteen, that didn’t necessarily mean he would just be done with his father – but her dad put a hand on her shoulder, and Tía Victoria sighed. “Okay. But I’m coming back tomorrow to check on you.”

Alex came back just as Tía Victoria was cleaning up. “Well, I’ve done as much as I can tonight. I’ll check your wrap tomorrow.”

“You really don’t…” Reggie started to say, but Tía Victoria cut him off.

“I’ll be back to see you tomorrow,” she said firmly.

Reggie settled back onto the pillows and sighed. “Okay. Thank you.”

Luke dropped Julie’s hand as if he had been burned when her tía and dad turned around. Tía Victoria didn’t seem to notice anything, but Julie’s dad looked right at them and rolled his eyes. Julie was still leaning against Luke, who was definitely trying to pretend that he hadn’t just been holding her hand.

“You boys are welcome to stay with him,” her dad said, kindly choosing not to comment on Luke’s mild panic attack. He looked at Julie and frowned. “You… you can stay for a little while.”

Julie smiled and shook her head up at him. “Alright.”

“Not too late, okay?” her tía said sternly, looking at Luke and Alex. “He needs his rest.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they both said in tandem.

“Goodnight, _mija_ ,” she said, giving Julie a quick kiss on the side of the head.

“Goodnight, Tía,” Julie whispered. “Thank you for coming.”

Her dad hesitated in the doorway for a second after her tía left. He looked at Julie. “Come find me before you go to bed.”

“Okay, Papi,” she said. He nodded, and turned to see her tía out.

“So if they have this nice guest room, why does Luke have to live in the garage?” Alex asked after a moment of silence, clearly in an attempt to break the silence and lighten the mood.

It worked; Reggie smirked and rolled his eyes. “I wonder why.”

They both looked from Luke to Julie.

“Well, I guess you’re feeling better if you’re up to making stupid jokes already,” Luke said with an eyeroll. They all knew it wasn’t really a joke, though; it was the absolute truth.

Reggie looked at her with wide, impressed eyes when her stomach growled audibly. Alex and Luke looked at her, too. “What? We never had dinner!”

“Sorry, Jules,” Luke murmured.

She shook her head at him - it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t anyone’s fault - and stood up. “Are any of you hungry? I’m going to grab Tía’s _arroz con pollo_ from the fridge.” 

“I’m starving,” Luke said, and the words were almost a moan as he imagined finally eating. 

Julie smiled and shook her head at him. “Obviously.” 

“I could eat,” Alex said. 

“I don’t know if I can, but I sure will try,” Reggie said. 

Julie laughed at him and nodded. “I’ll just heat up the whole thing and we can all eat it.”

Alex followed her into the kitchen. Julie thought maybe he was just trying to be helpful, but he mostly just stood and watched as she got the container of leftovers out of the fridge, put it in the microwave, and walked to the silverware drawer to get four forks.

“You okay, Alex?” she asked as they waited for the _arroz con pollo_ to heat up.

“Yeah.” He shrugged. And then, as if he couldn’t help it, he blurted, “You’re really lucky to have such a great dad.”

“I know,” she said simply, and then touched her fingers to his arm. “You know you guys all have him too, right?”

Alex made a small noncommittal humming noise, like he wanted to believe her but just couldn’t.

Instead of pushing it, she changed the subject. “How was your date? Or, the part of it that actually got to happen, anyway.”

“It was good.” She thought he might stop at that, but then he took a deep breath and let it out with a loud _whoosh_. “He’s so cute.”

She laughed, surprised. It was obvious that Alex was attracted to Willie, but he usually tried to downplay it. “Yeah, he really is.”

“And he’s really nice, too. He wasn’t mad at all when Luke called and I told him I had to go. He even drove me down to Reggie’s, and then he drove us all back here,” Alex told her, and his eyes were wide with wonder. “He said I’m _cool_. And… Julie, he called me cute.”

“Alex, you _are_ cool. And honestly, you’re a little bit more than cute. Maybe you should be offended,” Julie said with a wicked smile. Alex looked a little worried for a second before he realized what she had said and he laughed. “No, but really. Are you going to go out with him again?”

He sighed and shrugged. “I’m not sure if he’ll want to. Just because he was nice about it doesn’t mean it wasn’t all just too much for him, right?”

“But, Alex, he called you _cool_ ,” she joked.

“Julie, I’m serious,” he whined helplessly. “I don’t know how to do this! I may be one, but I just realized that I still don’t understand boys!”

“Well you’re in trouble if you’re looking for advice from me!” Julie exclaimed quietly. “I’m lost, too! I got mad at Luke earlier for purposely walking around without a shirt in the mornings when he knew I could see him even though _I’m the one looking_!”

She froze and stared at him with wide eyes. Had she really just gone and said that to Luke’s best friend? It didn’t matter if he was one of her best friends, too.

Alex smirked at her for a long moment before he laughed. “Oh, come on, Julie. Like I didn’t know. He’s basically my brother, but… he’s pretty hot, isn’t he?”

 _The hottest_ , she wanted to say. But she was too embarrassed.

Suddenly, Alex rolled his eyes. “Can you believe that out of the four of us, _Reggie_ is the only one with romantic experience?”

“Hey,” Julie protested, but the corners of her lips quirked. “Be nice. He’s hurt.”

“Well, I didn’t say it to him,” Alex muttered as the microwave beeped.

“Food,” she sighed delightedly. “Will you grab drinks?”

Luke was helping a wincing Reggie pull his shirt over his head when they walked in.

“Oh my God, there’s two of them,” Alex said in mock-horror when he saw Reggie’s exposed biceps.

“Lucky me,” Julie said, climbing onto the bed and sitting cross-legged next to Reggie. She put the bowl of food down on the comforter close to Reggie and made a show of checking him out.

“Careful, Luke, if you don’t watch out, she’s going to be looking at my arms from now on,” Reggie teased Luke, who rolled his eyes good-naturedly.

Julie noticed that it was the second time tonight that he hadn’t tried to deflect when Reggie and Alex alluded to this thing that was between him and her. The realization made her almost giddy.

“Who says I wasn’t already?” she joked.

“Careful, Jules, or you’ll break Luke’s heart,” Alex warned with a wink as he perched on the edge of the bed near Reggie’s feet and leaned across the mattress to scoop some rice onto his fork.

“He’s a big boy. He’ll live,” she said. She felt the mattress dip as Luke sat near her, and she heard his amused huff. She shot Alex a sly look. “What do you say, Alex? You wanna lose the sleeves and make me _really_ happy?”

His eyes narrowed, his nose scrunched, and his lips pressed tight together as he cocked his head at her. “Yeah, I think I’m good.”

Reggie laughed, and immediately groaned, clutching at his side.

“Guys,” he complained. “Don’t make me laugh.”

“Sorry, Reggie,” Julie said, shooting him a sympathetic look as she handed him a fork. “Here, eat.”

It didn’t take long for the four of them to finish the entire bowl of _arroz con pollo_ , and it wasn’t long after that that Reggie began to nod off. Julie pushed to her feet and gave his hand a squeeze.

“Goodnight, Reggie,” she whispered. She leaned down and brushed her lips gently to his cheek before she turned to gather the empty bowl.

“I’ll get that, Julie,” Alex said, stopping her. “You need to go talk to your dad, remember?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I remember. Thanks, Alex. Goodnight.”

She met Luke’s gaze; he was watching her, looking like he wished very much that they were alone, and regretting that they couldn’t be right now. She understood completely. She smiled at him, felt her heart flutter when he smiled back, and turned to walk out of the room.

“Julie.” She turned at the soft call from behind her to find him right behind her on the stairs once again. “Are you… are you in trouble with your dad?”

She frowned at him. “I don’t think so? I don’t know why I would be. He probably just wants to talk to me about Reggie.”

Luke nodded, clearly thinking about all that had happened, and all that hadn’t. “I’m so sorry about tonight, I…”

“Stop,” she whispered, interrupting him and shaking her head as she reached for his hands. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Reggie needed you.”

And he had dropped everything and ran to him. And so had Alex, who was on his first date with a guy he really liked. It only made him love her boys even more. It only made her like Luke even more.

He linked their fingers together and lowered his head so they were eye-to-eye. “I know, but I really wanted to talk to you.”

“I did, too,” she murmured. “Tonight just wasn’t the night. But there’s no rush.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” he breathed. “I guess our _views_ aren’t going anywhere, right?”

When he had first mentioned talking about their views tonight, she had known right off the bat that he wasn’t talking about the literal views they had of each other from their respective windows. It was just a Luke-ism. Every time he said _views_ , he meant _feelings_.

She smiled, a small, soft thing, and squeezed his hands. “My views are only getting stronger by the second.”

He smiled back at her. “Mine too, Jules.”

“Luke, did you get the…” Alex froze in the doorway and stared at them, wide-eyed for a second before he spun on his heel and walked away. “Never mind, I’ll find them.”

Julie chuckled and shook her head as Luke sighed. “Talk to you later.”

“Yeah, goodnight, Julie,” Luke said.

She started up the stairs again, and paused only a few steps away to turn and rush back down to him. He shot her a concerned, questioning look before she wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder. He didn’t even hesitate before he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and drew her closer.

When she drew back, she didn’t let herself think too much about it before she leaned up and placed a kiss on his warm cheek.

“Goodnight, Luke,” she whispered, and ran up the stairs to find her dad.

He was in his office editing some pictures on his computer; he looked up when she walked in.

“You wanted to talk to me, Papi?” she said, wringing her hands nervously. She had been honest when she’d told Luke she didn’t think she was in trouble, but that didn’t mean she was going to enjoy their conversation. She had some idea what it might be about.

“How’s Reggie?” he asked.

“I think he’s okay,” she said. “He ate some of the _arroz con pollo_ and he was falling asleep when I left. I think Luke and Alex were going to camp out on the floor to be with him.”

“That’s good. He’s going to need his friends after what he’s been through,” he told her, and rubbed tiredly at his shadowed eyes. “Sit down, _mija_. I want to talk to you.”

“Okay.” She sat in the chair by the window and watched as her father got up and walked over to her.

“Julie, I know you’ve grown very close to these boys,” he began.

She bit her lip. Here it was.

“And I don’t want to just assume things, so I wanted to ask you first.” He squatted down and took her hands in his. “How would you feel if I offered to let Reggie live here? Just like Luke.”

“I…” She gaped at him. “That is _not_ what I was expecting.”

“What were you expecting?” He smiled, amused, when she blushed. “What happens between you and Luke is your business. But if I feel like it’s getting… out of hand, I will make it my business.”

“Yeah, I’m totally cool with Reggie living here! It’ll be fun!” she said brightly, ignoring his comment about Luke. Then, she frowned. “But I don’t know how he’ll feel about leaving his sister.”

“Well, he doesn’t have to accept,” he told her. “But I want him to know the offer is on the table.”

She nodded, and then leaned forward to hug him long and hard.

“This is nice,” he said softly. “What is it for?”

“You’re the best papi, you know that?” she whispered into his shirt. “You almost made all three of the boys cry tonight because of how amazing you are. I love you.”

“I love you too, _mija_. With all my heart,” he said. They embraced for a long time before finally she pulled away and he leveled a serious look on her. “But really, you understand what I meant about Luke, right?”

Julie rolled her eyes, and her cheeks felt warm again. “Yes, Papi, I got it.”

His lips quivered, and Julie scowled at him. He was _enjoying_ this. He was _teasing_ her. “Because it’s just that you’re sixteen and he’s seventeen, and boys…”

“I _got it_ , Papi!” she repeated louder, cutting him off as she jumped to her feet. “I’m going to bed.”

He was laughing when she ran out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me! I know it's not what any of you wanted or expected.   
> Luke and Julie _will_ talk about their feelings eventually. We all just need to wait patiently.


	13. You're not legally allowed to be a pro, yet.

On Sunday afternoon, Julie’s dad and aunt drove Reggie down to the crappy little house on the beach he had lived in his whole life. Alex, Julie, and Luke tried to go with them, but Julie’s dad thought it would be best if they all stayed behind. Luke thought it was probably mostly because of him. He had almost punched Bobby in the face again right there in front of Julie’s dad that day when they had all gone down to clear their stuff out of Bobby’s garage, and Bobby hadn’t even said anything to piss him off. It was enough just to think about what he had called Alex at the Hollywood Ghost Club. Probably if Luke saw Reggie’s dad, no one and nothing would be able to stop him.

So, he sat in the studio with Julie and Alex. They tried to distract themselves, but for the first time since they had started writing together, neither Julie nor Luke could think of a single lyric. It wasn’t like they could all jam, either. It just didn’t feel right to rehearse without Reggie, and didn’t that just suck? Because Reggie wasn’t going to be able to play for at least a few weeks while his ribs healed up.

Julie and Alex were on the couch. He was showing her something on his phone - a text from Willie, probably - as he absently twirled a drumstick in his right hand. Luke was on the floor, his elbow resting lightly on Julie’s knee as he tried to focus on his science homework. It was hard, though, because his thoughts kept drifting to Reggie, or to Julie and that talk they hadn’t been able to have yet. And, of course, because the only subject in school he didn’t find totally worthless was English. 

Sometimes he seriously considered just dropping out and being done with it all, just focusing on the music full time. But then he would basically be alone all the time while three of the very few people who actually mattered to him were gone all day five days a week. That, and he was afraid to disappoint Julie’s dad who had already done so much for him and his friends when he really didn’t have to.

He sighed and closed his notebook and pushed it away; it was pointless. He would get it done, but not right now. Julie and Alex looked up from his phone when Luke stood.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “I’m just going to get some water.”

What he really needed was to stretch his legs and hopefully to clear his mind. He strolled slowly up to the house and into the kitchen. Maybe he would grab some snacks while he was at it.

He opened the refrigerator and was distracted almost immediately by the soft, hesitant sound of a slightly untuned guitar from upstairs. He froze, listening for a second as a chord played that was just slightly off. After a moment’s hesitation – the only other person in the house was Carlos, and Reggie was the one who was good with kids and already had a good relationship with Julie’s little brother – he closed the refrigerator and headed upstairs.

The door to Carlos’s room was open, but Luke thought it was always open. He hadn’t been upstairs very often - just a couple times to talk to Ray in his office and that one time a couple nights ago when he had finally been able to see Julie’s room - but Carlos’s door had been open every time whether he was in there or not. Carlos was sitting cross-legged on his bed with a guitar on his lap. Luke was surprised to see that it was _his_ old junior guitar, the first one he’d ever gotten about six years ago now; he hadn’t even noticed it was gone from the studio. He had taken it back from Bobby’s house and had left it sitting on a stand in the corner of the studio near Julie’s mom’s old guitars. He tapped his knuckles lightly on the door frame and made Carlos jump.

“Hey, man,” Luke said when the younger boy looked up at him with wide eyes. “What’s up?”

“I was just borrowing it!” Carlos said after a moment of startled gaping.

Luke smiled and shook his head. “No worries, dude. I haven’t played that thing since I grew out of it four years ago.”

The only reason he even still had it was sentimentality. It was embarrassing, but his parents had bought it for him when he was eleven, back before they decided music was a waste of time and money, back when he still had a relationship with them. He’d held onto it as a reminder that things hadn’t always been this way between them.

“My mom was teaching me to play,” Carlos told him. With what little he knew of her from Julie, Luke wasn’t surprised to hear that. “She was going to get me my own guitar. My size, like this. But then she got sick.”

Luke felt a little stab of grief for Carlos, but he noticed it seemed to be much easier for Carlos to talk about his mother than it was for Julie. Carlos had just been so young when he’d lost her; he probably hadn’t been as aware of everything that was happening to her, not the way Julie had been.

“Is it okay if I come in?” Luke asked. When Carlos nodded, he stepped into the room and sat on the very edge of the bed next to Carlos. He reached over and adjusted the young boy’s fingers on the neck of the guitar, used his own fingers to press Carlos’s down a little firmer. “Try now.”

“Wow,” Carlos said when the guitar emitted a much cleaner sound than before. It was still out of tune, but Luke could fix that easily. Better, he could teach Carlos how to fix it. “But it kind of hurts.”

Luke laughed and nodded. “Yeah, it does at first. A little. If you keep it up, your fingers will get rough and it won’t hurt anymore.”

He held his left hand out, showed Carlos the calloused tips of his fingers. When Luke had first started playing, he had practiced so much his fingers had bled. He didn’t tell Carlos about that, though. Carlos grinned and there was that slightly discordant metallic twang that Luke had always loved as he slid his fingers further down the neck of the guitar.

“Tell you what, “ Luke said. “Why don’t you keep it?”

Carlos’s head snapped up so quickly from where he had it bent over the neck of the guitar concentrating on fitting his fingers on the strings just right that Luke wondered briefly if kids could give themselves whiplash just by shifting their attention. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Luke shrugged. “I don’t play it anymore. It’s just sitting out there collecting dust.”

That, and he knew how special Rose Molina was to her family. Julie had bonded with her mother over their shared love of piano, and while Carlos may not have gotten the chance to bond as strongly with her over guitar, it was obvious that he still connected playing guitar to hanging out with his mom. He should be able to feel that whenever he wanted.

“Listen,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I still have my old books from when I was teaching myself to play. I think I saw them in one of my boxes in the studio. If you want them, they’re yours too.” 

“Are you sure?” Carlos said, eyes wide on Luke’s face. “Don’t you want to keep them?”

“Nah.” Luke made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Haven’t you noticed? I’m a pro. If you want, I can help you learn.”

“You’re a teenager. I don’t think you’re legally allowed to be a pro yet,” Carlos said. Luke looked at him for a second and then laughed. Carlos smiled up at him. “But yeah, you can teach me. If you want to.” 

“Yeah, man! I think it’ll be really fun!” Luke said enthusiastically. Maybe kids weren’t so hard to connect with after all. Or maybe _all_ the Molinas were just special. “But you have to promise to go easy on me. I’ve never taught anyone before.”

“I make no promises,” Carlos said, and strummed again.

Luke winced and reached over to take the guitar from him. “Okay, first and most important lesson, kid: how to tune your guitar.”

It took a while; Carlos had a lot of questions, and he often talked over the tuning process so what would normally take Luke only a couple of minutes to do all six strings took him about five minutes just to properly tune _one string_. It was kind of funny, though, how eager the kid was. So Luke handed the guitar back to him for Carlos to do the rest, showing him the tuning keys and how to turn them to tighten and loosen each string.

Almost an hour later, Luke and Carlos walked into the studio to find that Julie and Alex didn’t seem to have moved an inch. They were still sitting close together, only now Julie’s left leg was pulled up under her on the couch so that her knee was resting on top of Alex’s thigh. She had her own phone out now, but she was laughing at something on Alex’s phone when Luke walked in.

“Where have you been?” Alex asked, noticing him first.

“Hey, Carlos,” Julie said, her eyes going wide when she saw him standing next to Luke holding his guitar. “What’s going on?”

It didn’t take a genius to guess that she was worried Carlos was bothering Luke. He tried to send her a reassuring smile, but she was staring at her little brother with pursed lips.

“Luke’s teaching me to play guitar!” Carlos said, and he sounded more like an excited kid than Luke had ever heard him before. He didn’t seem to care about his sister’s glare at all as he turned his face up to look at Luke. “Where are they?”

“I think I saw them up in the loft,” Luke said. “In the box with all my old songbooks.”

Carlos took off running, climbing the steps to the loft with palpable enthusiasm. He moved slowly, carefully holding his new – Luke’s old – guitar over his head so that he didn’t accidentally knock it on the lip of any of the steps.

Julie turned to raise her eyebrows at him.

“My old guitar workbooks,” Luke said, answering Julie’s unspoken question. “I told him he could have them.”

Julie’s gaze went softer than Luke had ever seen. “You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to teach him how to play,” she said quietly so that Carlos couldn’t hear her from the loft, where Luke could hear him searching for the workbooks.

“I don’t mind,” he said with an awkward shrug. He _really_ liked when Julie looked at him, but there was something nerve racking about the intensity of her gaze right now. “Besides, I already gave him my junior guitar. Now I have to teach him how to play it.”

“This is _a lot_ of workbooks!” Carlos called down from the loft.

Luke grinned at Julie and Alex and turned to run up the steps to the loft. “Well, how did you think I got to be a pro?”

“I _told you_ you can’t be a pro. You’re only seventeen,” Carlos said.

Luke just laughed, and was about to run down to grab another guitar so he could give Carlos his first lesson when he heard voices out in the yard. He leaned over the loft railing, saw Julie and Alex had jumped to their feet and were looking out the open studio doors.

Julie’s dad and aunt were walking on either side of Reggie; her aunt was talking, clearly saying something that was supposed to be uplifting. But Luke could tell, even from all the way up in the loft where he could barely see anything, that Reggie was totally crushed.

“Sorry, Carlos, but we’re gonna have to take a raincheck,” he said, already running down the stairs to stand with Julie and Alex. He was sure Reggie, Ray, and Julie’s aunt all knew they were there, but they turned and headed into the kitchen anyway. There was a big duffle bag over Ray’s shoulder.

Luke looked at Alex and Julie, saw that they looked just as concerned as he felt. Julie looked over and their gazes locked. She reached down and took his hand, and took Alex’s hand in her other, and pulled them toward the house.

Ray and Julie’s aunt were still in the kitchen, but Reggie was nowhere to be seen when they walked in the door. Ray turned around; his eyes sad, and sighed. “He’s in his room. I think he needs his friends.”

Julie’s grip on his hand tightened and he realized he was probably squeezing her hand a little too hard. He loosened his hold on her, but his mind was still caught on what Ray had said. “ _His_ room?”

“Reggie’s going to be staying with us, too, for the foreseeable future,” Ray said.

Luke took a deep breath. He felt something like relief knowing that Reggie would be here, that he would be safe. But he also felt a horrible sense of grief and regret. What had happened back at his house for things to be decided so quickly?

A hundred awful scenarios were playing in Luke’s mind as he walked through the kitchen with Alex and Julie and turned toward the guest room… Reggie’s room. Had his dad been there? Had he said some horrible, awful, soul-crushing things to him? Had his mom been there and blamed everything on him? Had they kicked him out? Had there been cops there?

Reggie was sitting on the edge of the bed staring blankly ahead when they stopped in the doorway. Julie was the first one to move; she let go of Luke and Alex’s hands and walked to the bed, climbed up next to Reggie, and carefully curled into him, mindful of his injuries. She rested her head on his shoulder, wrapped one of her arms around his neck and lay the other in his lap, and turned her body so her knee knocked one of his.

Alex and Luke followed suit; Alex sat on Reggie’s other side and gripped his shoulder. Luke knelt at his feet. And they waited.

“There was no one home,” Reggie finally said, and his voice was surprisingly strong and unwavering. “We waited for a while. I thought maybe they went out for a minute. But then I went to me and Sammie’s room because, no offense, Luke, but I was really tired of wearing your clothes. And there was only my stuff in there.”

“All of Sammie’s stuff, her clothes, her little big girl bed, her nightlight, and her stuffed animals… they were all gone.” His voice broke and he sniffled. Luke knew from experience that it was painful to cry with a broken nose, but what could Reggie do about it? “So I walked down the hall to my parents’ room. All my mom’s stuff is gone too, but her phone is sitting there next to the bed. She must have come back at some point. After we left. And packed up and just… they’re gone. Sammie’s gone.”

Reggie liked kids, it was true. But he was in love with his sister, and Luke couldn’t really blame him. She was only three years old with curly blond hair and bright blue eyes. She looked more like Alex than Reggie, to be honest, but she was sweet and goofy and loving just like her brother. Reggie was fourteen when she was born and his parents had shoved her crib into the corner of his room.

Luke was an only child, but he knew enough to know that Reggie had woken up with that baby so many times those first few months. And he knew enough about Reggie’s parents to know that they weren’t the ones fixing her bottles and changing her diapers and soothing her back to sleep. The constant dark circles under his eyes only confirmed those suspicions. But Reggie never once complained. Because she was more than his little sister. She was practically his kid.

“Maybe we can find them,” Alex said softly.

“Yeah, we can track them down,” Luke said. He would ride his bike all over LA if he had to. He would make posters. He would actually start using social media and post Sammie all over the place if he had to. Whatever it took to get that heartbroken look off of his best friend’s face.

“We’ll do whatever we can to help you, Reggie,” Julie whispered. Luke saw her fingers slide through Reggie’s; he fixated for a moment on the way her warm skin stood out against the small red cut on the back of Reggie’s hand. “You’re not alone.”

“That’s what your dad said,” Reggie said. “He said he’s got a friend who helps find missing people, and he’s going to ask him to help. And your aunt said she’s going to ask her pediatrician friends to keep a lookout. But it’s just… they could be anywhere.”

“Whatever it takes, Reggie,” Luke said. “However long it takes.”

“You have to keep your head up, Reg. _I’m_ not the optimist in this group,” Alex said.

Reggie smiled at that, just a little quirk of his lips. But it was enough. It was hope. “Thank you guys. For being my family.”

His fingers tightened around Julie’s hand and his other hand slid into Alex’s. Luke took their other hands. And the four of them sat together.

Luke realized that Reggie was right. These people right here, and the ones out in the kitchen? They were a family. The people who had your back when they didn’t have to were the ones you held onto, not the ones who left you behind and turned their backs on you. He knew that Reggie would get through this because there was damn near a parade of people who would hold him up. And they would all do the same for any one of them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Omg guyyysssss.   
> I thought Sammie was Reggie's sister's name in canon, but I realized that I totally accidentally stole it from ICanSpellConfusionWithAK's Feels like I've opened my eyes again. You should check it out if you haven't already. It's a season 2 fic that's already complete at 48 chapters and over 100K words. :)
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and revel in the feels these kids all have for each other. Let me know what you think, and stay tuned for the next chapter ;)


	14. Don't think, just sing.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group helps Julie through her first solo performance for class, and Luke discovers a surprise.

“Remind me again why you’re freaking out?” Reggie said to Julie as they walked together, slowly because of his still healing ribs, into the cafeteria. It had taken them an embarrassingly long time to realize that Reggie’s last class before lunch was right next door to Julie’s. “I didn’t think you were still having trouble.”

“Yeah, it’s fine with you guys,” Julie said as they sat down at their usual table rather than standing in the lunch line. Reggie and Luke wouldn’t take money from her dad for lunch, but he had figured out early on with Luke that if he sent Julie to school with _way too much_ food, the boys would eat without protest. “And the writing assignments are easy enough, but I haven’t actually played for anyone else yet.”

Julie had her first performance in music today and she couldn't remember ever feeling less prepared for anything in her life. Luke had been just as confused as Reggie when she had confided in him last night while they were writing in the studio. Apart from her dad, Carlos, and Flynn, no one but the boys had heard her play or sing since Battle of the Bands. She was reminded of her initial fear when Luke had invited her to join the band, that maybe she wasn’t actually back to performing, that it was a one-off. Except now she was thinking it was more that she couldn’t do it without her boys. Maybe she just wasn’t a soloist anymore.

“You ready to kill it?” Luke dropped into the seat next to her. She didn’t miss the way he scooted closer to her, or the way he rested his arm on the back of her chair and spoke close in her ear. If they hadn’t _almost_ confessed their feelings for each other last weekend, she might have been able to write it off as just Luke being Luke. He was, she knew by now, very touchy with the people he cared about. And, really, he did do it because he cared about her; she just knew it wasn’t the same way it was with Reggie and Alex.

They still hadn’t had a chance to talk about it. Now that Reggie was officially living with them as well, Alex was coming over even more often, too. She thought at first it was because he didn’t want to be the only one not around, but Luke had told her that he thought Alex liked being around her family, seeing how accepting and loving they were. That he was starved for that love and acceptance. She was happy to have them around, happy to share her family with them. It was just that now she and Luke so rarely got a chance to be alone anymore.

She thought he had started to bring it up a couple of times, but one time Carlos had come out to ask for a guitar lesson, and another time her dad had announced dinner, and then Reggie had come to complain about how he was going to lose his skills if he wasn’t able to start playing again soon. She knew Luke was happy to have them all around all the time, but she could tell he was starting to get frustrated; she was, too.

“Hey,” Luke said in her ear when she frowned and pushed the huge container of pasta her dad had sent her to school with this morning closer to Reggie. She was suddenly feeling nauseous. She looked up at him, and her breath caught in her throat; his mouth was so close to her skin. She should have been used to it by now, but she really, _really_ wasn’t. “You _are_ going to kill it.”

“He’s right, you are,” Reggie said, helping himself to the pasta as Alex and Flynn arrived at the table together.

“What are we talking about?” Alex asked, tossing his lunch bag towards the center of the table as Flynn did the same with her lunch tray. It had become sort of a thing that they did lately, this potluck style lunch.

“How Julie’s going to blow everyone away with her performance later,” Luke said confidently. His arm settled so that it was more obvious to everyone else that it was around her rather than simply perched on the back of her chair as he leaned his body closer to her even while he turned his head to talk to Alex.

“Yeah, she is!” Flynn exclaimed. “God, do you think Carrie’s going to cry, or be pissed when you shove your talent down her throat? Which do you think would be better? I think I’d be good with either.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Julie said uncertainly, ignoring the mini rant about Carrie. “I know you’re all right.”

“…But?” Alex prompted gently.

“Yeah, I still don’t really understand all… this.” Reggie’s mouth turned down at the corners and his eyes went wide in what Julie thought was supposed to be an imitation of her nervous, frightened face.

“Dude!” Luke threw a fry from Flynn’s tray at Reggie’s head.

“I was just trying to lighten the mood!” Reggie said defensively.

“It’s just… I haven’t played without you guys since… well, since I started playing with you guys,” she said lamely. But it had been even longer than that, really. Because even though she hadn’t really known them before, it was also true that she hadn’t played without them since her mom died. “It feels… wrong… to go solo.”

The table was quiet for a moment.

“Well, maybe we can play with you,” Reggie suggested.

“You _can’t_ ,” Flynn said, rolling her eyes.

“Oh.” Reggie touched his aching side with a frown. “Right.”

“She’s right. Not just because of that,” Julie said, reaching out to touch his arm lightly. “But thank you, Reggie.”

“Well, why not, then?” Alex asked. “I know there’s a drum set in that big, fancy music room, and there are _definitely_ guitars of every kind.”

“Yeah, of course, but she has to do it alone or she’s out of the program,” Flynn said. “Not Mrs. Harrison’s rules, but Principal Lessa’s. We all have to perform our solos.”

“Well, Lessa and Covington should become friends with rules like that,” Luke said, thinking back to the rule that would have disqualified them from Battle of the Bands if Julie hadn’t stepped in and changed all their lives. “They can’t kick you out. You’re the most talented person in that class.”

“Hey!” Flynn protested. “I mean, you’re right, but still. Hey!”

Alex shook his head at Flynn, and then frowned at Julie. “He’s right. That’s a stupid rule. You should be able to perform whatever you want. If it’s music, it’s music.”

Julie shrugged helplessly. “It’s fine. Besides, you guys would probably get in trouble if we did perform together since you’re not part of the program.”

“Foiled at every turn!” Reggie exclaimed.

“You know what all this talk about performing reminds me of? We really need to play a gig,” Luke sighed; Julie knew that he said it to change the subject, to distract their friends. She was grateful. It was only making her more nervous the more they talked about it. “We haven’t done anything since Battle of the Bands. It’s been almost three months!”

Luke had wanted to work up all new songs for when they did start playing sets because he didn’t want anything about their music to be attributed to Bobby. He had dozens… probably a hundred songs that he had written for Sunset Curve, songs that Bobby had known and played with them. Aside from the fact that he and Julie wrote so well together, and had a really great time doing it, that was a big reason why they were constantly writing.

Despite all of that, Julie knew she was part of the reason for the hang-up. Her dad was supportive and had never once complained about the constant rehearsals in his backyard, or the fact that he now had three teenage boys to feed night and day. She knew Luke was worried that he would change his tune when he learned that the boys were used to playing clubs even though they were underage; worried that he wouldn’t allow Julie out to play shows with them late at night. She thought he was being unfair to her dad, who would probably be okay with it as long as he was there to supervise, but she understood it. Even though Luke _knew_ her dad was cool and supportive, he was still used to parents being _uncool_ and actively trying to put an end to his passions.

“Well, Julie’s aunt said to give it another couple weeks before I try to play, and to take it easy when I do start,” Reggie said, and then held his hands out in front of him and pantomimed playing an invisible bass. “I might be a little stiff moving around the stage for a while, but as long as my fingers still work, and I can hold the bass without wanting to pass out, I think I’ll be fine.”

“Take your time, Reggie,” Flynn said firmly. “You can’t perform until you come up with a _name_.”

Alex groaned at her reminder. “God, you’re right.”

“I know I am. And after you come up with your name, then I can _finally_ make your Insta and Twitter pages and I can start posting for you,” Flynn told him. “I have some great ideas for photo shoots we can do. Ray already said he’d help.”

“Posting for us?” Alex raised an eyebrow at her. “What are you? Our social media manager?”

“Self-appointed, but yes,” Flynn said proudly. “I’m going to help you guys make it. You’re welcome.”

“Hey, she’s probably right. We never did any promotional stuff before, and it took us forever to start booking gigs,” Reggie said.

“I _am_ right,” Flynn said. “Speaking of which, I was thinking we could start a Youtube channel, too. We can film your sets and maybe even some rehearsals!”

With everyone else distracted, Julie was able to just zone out for the rest of the lunch period. She almost missed when the bell rang at the end of lunch. Actually, she probably would have missed it completely if Luke hadn’t pulled her out of her seat.

For once, the boys didn’t say their goodbyes to Julie and Flynn in the cafeteria. Instead, the five of them all walked to the music room together with Julie sandwiched between Luke and Flynn with Alex and Reggie following close behind. They stopped just short of actually going inside the room.

“Make Carrie cry, Julie,” Reggie said with a wink for Flynn. “I think it’ll be more satisfying than if she’s just mad.”

“Huh, you’re probably right,” Flynn said with a thoughtful frown.

“Don’t listen to him, Jules,” Alex said, stepping up and hugging her tightly. “Just be awesome. Shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Oh, class is about to start,” Flynn said when she heard the usual ruckus of seats being rearranged to form a makeshift audience seating area before performances. “Come on, Julie. Let’s go.”

“Hey,” Luke said, grabbing her arm before she could follow Flynn inside. Alex and Reggie were waiting at the end of the hall, giving them a minute alone. When she looked up into his face, she saw pure encouragement. “Don’t think. Just sing.”

“Just sing,” she repeated quietly with a nod of her head. Was it really just that simple?

“And Julie?” He smiled and the look in his eyes softened into something she couldn’t quite place, but it was that look that made her feel all warm. “Whatever happens when you get up there, just remember that, well, you have more talent in your pinky finger than everyone else in that room combined.”

For a second, all she could do was stare at him. Then, she threw her arms around his waist and pressed herself to his chest. Immediately, with no hesitation, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

“Thank you,” she mumbled into the flannel he was wearing, the one she was sure had originated from Reggie – they really had more of a communal clothes pile than separate wardrobes at this point. “I think I can do it now.”

“Was it the talk or the hug?” he whispered into her hair.

She grinned against his chest and squeezed her arms around him a little tighter. “Both.”

“Well, you’re welcome,” he said, and then eased back and held her shoulders at arm’s length. “But just so you know, you could have done it without either.”

Then he turned and walked down the hall to where Alex and Reggie were waiting. She watched them until they turned the corner and then she turned to walk into the classroom. And almost walked right into Mrs. Harrison.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Harrison,” Julie said, blushing. She had no idea how long her music teacher had been standing there, but from the smile on the older woman’s face, she could only guess it had been a while.

“It’s okay. How are you feeling about today, Julie?” Mrs. Harrison asked. She had been really great about allowing Julie to take all the time she needed to finally perform in class again, but today was Julie’s last chance, as declared by Principal Lessa. Mrs. Harrison couldn’t say this, but Julie knew she didn’t approve of the principal interfering in the way she ran her class.

“Um… okay. I feel okay,” Julie said, and then nodded. “I can do it.”

“Well, I think we all look forward to hearing that beautiful voice again.” She stepped aside and gestured for Julie to pass her. “Why don’t you take your seat?”

“What did Luke want?” Flynn whispered when Julie hurried over to sit next to her.

“Pep talk,” Julie whispered back.

“A good one?” Flynn asked.

“His best yet,” Julie said.

It was saying something; Flynn knew how good Luke was at talking up his friends.

Flynn grinned and nodded. “Nice. Well, you should know that half the class saw how you guys ended that little pep talk.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Julie hissed.

“That was a really nice hug,” Flynn whispered back. “Carrie even looked jealous.”

Julie rolled her eyes. “Okay.”

“She did,” Flynn insisted. “So did Nick.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Julie said, but she believed it. Nick was still taking the time to walk out of music class with her and even though he had been the one to tell her about her and Luke’s heart eye emoji expressions around each other, he always seemed at least a little put out when Luke was there by her locker every day.

Sure enough, when she stole a glance at him, he was looking at her. She gave him an awkward smile. He nodded, and smiled back a little less brightly than he normally would.

“See?” Flynn breathed in her ear.

Julie turned to face the front and purposely ignored Flynn as she waited for Mrs. Harrison to call her up to perform. It took about fifteen minutes for her to get through her announcements, but finally she gestured for Julie to come up and join her.

“And today, Julie is going to perform an original song for us,” Mrs. Harrison said with a warm smile. “Julie, take your time.”

Julie nodded and walked on mostly steady legs to the piano in the front of the room as Mrs. Harrison moved to sit in the front row.

She placed her fingers in position on the keys and took a deep breath. When she let it out, she began to play.

There was a choking noise.

Julie stopped playing and looked around, confused, for the source of the sound. At the back of the class, Carrie was smirking at her.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Carrie said in that sugary, extra fake voice of hers. “I had something stuck in my throat.”

“Really?” Flynn said harshly, turning in her seat to glare at her. “Maybe it was that frog who sings for Dirty Candy.”

“You know what, Flynn?” Carrie said, glaring at her.

“Girls!” Mrs. Harrison said sharply. “Carrie, drink some water. Flynn, sit down!”

Flynn, who had started to rise from her seat, fell back and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Julie, go ahead,” Mrs. Harrison said softly.

Julie, who had been feeling relatively confident when she first sat down to play, was suddenly a nervous wreck again. Her fingers trembled on the keys. She looked up; Flynn smiled at her and gave her a thumbs up of encouragement.

Something in the window caught her eye and she froze. They were there: her boys, the three of them, standing in the window outside the music room grinning at her and silently encouraging her to play.

Julie laughed quietly and shook her head. Mrs. Harrison frowned at her and Julie quickly looked down at the keys, doing her best to bite back her smile.

She began to play again. And then, she began to sing.

When she finished, the room erupted in applause and loud cheers, but Julie only saw Flynn jumping up and down, and behind her the boys in the window. Her eyes went wide and she laughed, covering her mouth with her hands in a fruitless attempt to hide it. Reggie was making devil horns with both hands, which was about as much physical exertion as he could safely manage with his ribs. Next to him, though, Luke was on Alex’s shoulders. They were all three chanting her name; she could just barely hear it over the cheers and applause from her classmates.

Mrs. Harrison stood up just as Alex lost his footing and tripped, falling forward. Luke smacked the widow and fell off of his shoulders. Julie was worried for all of half a second before Luke popped up, and gave her a double thumbs up. His eyes went wide when he saw that Mrs. Harrison and most of the class were looking at them, and then he and Alex took off running, leaving Reggie to hobble awkwardly after them. Flynn fell into her chair, cackling loudly.

Mrs. Harrison turned to look at Julie, who bit her lip and then shrugged with a helpless chuckle. Mrs. Harrison smiled and shook her head as Julie stood up and made her way around the piano.

“Congratulations, Julie. That was wonderful,” she said, choosing not to comment on the three boys who had clearly skipped class to watch her perform.

No, not to _watch_ her perform. To _be with her_. So she didn’t feel alone without them. She smiled. She really, really loved those boys.

“Thank you, Mrs. Harrison,” she said, and went back to her seat where she was immediately engulfed in a hug from a squealing Flynn.

“Oh my God, Carrie is _so_ mad!” Flynn said in her ear, then quickly sobered and sighed. “I mean, I think Reggie may have been right. Crying may have been slightly more gratifying. But this is still nice.”

All Julie could do was grin, shake her head, and return Flynn’s hug.

When class ended, Nick stood by his chair and waited for her to gather her things when Flynn rushed out with a hurried goodbye to get to her class all the way on the other side of the school.

“Hey, Julie,” he said with a wide smile. “You were really great today.”

“Thanks, Nick,” she said, but she was eager to get to her locker. To get to Luke.

“Um, so you and that Luke guy,” Nick said in what was clearly supposed to be a nonchalant tone. “Are you still, you know, just friends?”

Julie hesitated, one hand on the strap of her bookbag, and shrugged. “Um. Kind of. Maybe now we’re best friends?”

It wasn’t at all what they were. They were definitely more than that. But until they actually talked about it, she wasn’t going to be the one to tell anyone anything different.

Nick made a face at her – a mix of amused and exasperated – when they walked out of the room. He stopped her with a hand on the shoulder when she started towards her locker and turned her in the opposite direction.

“He’s over there,” he said, and he was right. Julie lit up when she saw Luke standing about twenty feet away with a stupidly proud smile on his face. “Sure looks like a boyfriend to me, Molina.”

She looked at Nick and smiled. He was right; Luke looked an awful lot like the most incredible boyfriend in the world. “See you around, Nick.”

“Bye,” he said as Julie hurried over to Luke.

Before he could even say anything, she threw her arms around him. He didn’t seem to mind; he slid his arms around her waist, lifted her clear off the ground, and swung her around in a congratulatory circle. When he set her down, breathless and laughing, he put his hands on either side of her face and grinned at her, pure adoration and admiration radiating from his gaze.

“Oh my God. Julie!” His thumbs stroked her cheeks. “You were fucking amazing.”

“I almost wasn’t. I almost couldn’t do it,” she admitted. “Carrie… she… it doesn’t matter. I froze, and then I saw you guys were there. And I knew I could do it.”

Luke rolled his eyes and, to her immense disappointment, released her face. “Fuck Carrie.”

“Seriously,” Julie agreed. Then, feeling bold, she took his hand, laced their fingers together, and started walking to their next classes. This, the handholding, was obviously nothing new for them; they did it all the time at home. Neither, especially, was the PDA they had been engaging in all day. But they had never actually held hands while they walked through the halls at school.

“Don’t you need to go to your locker?” Luke asked when she turned the wrong way down the hall.

“No. I actually usually don’t need to go to my locker after music. I just didn’t have my textbook that one day,” she admitted, smiling shyly up at him. “I’ve only been going to my locker before math to see you.”

“Oh.” At first, he looked abashed. Then, he looked very pleased with himself. “Okay. That’s nice to know.”

“Yeah, so, um…” She bit her lip. “We should probably have that conversation that we never got the chance to have.”

“Yeah, definitely.” He nodded enthusiastically. “Today? I’ll ask Reggie and Alex _not_ to hang out with us in the studio.”

“That sounds perfect,” Julie said. Carlos had baseball practice, so he would be out for a while with their dad.

Math had always felt like the longest hour to Julie, ever since things had gotten more complex than adding and subtracting. Still, today time crawled. She found herself watching the clock more than she watched the teacher.

Finally, after what felt like eternity, the bell rang and she bolted out of the room. It was extra, she was sure, but she couldn’t wait to see Luke’s face again and it had barely been an hour. She almost ran right into him when she rushed out of the room.

“Oh! Hey!” she said, flustered by the intense, wild look in his eyes. “Are you okay?”

He reached for her and, there in the middle of the hall with people all around them, students and teachers alike, he kissed her. It was not how she had pictured her first kiss happening. It was clumsy and a little uncertain like she assumed most first kisses went, but that part wasn’t too far off from what she had imagined.

She had always thought it would be a more private event between her and a guy she really liked. Her vision had grown more specific when she realized the guy in question would be Luke, would have to be Luke. She had thought they would be in the studio, alone, maybe in the afternoon, maybe later in the evening. Maybe they would be writing a song, maybe they would just be hanging out, and then... and then he would kiss her. Or maybe, just maybe if she were feeling bold, she would kiss him. 

It wasn’t what she had expected; it was so much more. Because something in Luke had clearly snapped and made it impossible for him to wait even a second longer. She understood completely.

“Patterson! Molina! Separate!” a deep, authoritative voice called, and they pulled apart, both heaving for breath.

She stared up at Luke, who spared the briefest glance over his shoulder and muttered an insincere, “Sorry Mr. Cresley,” slid his fingers through hers, and pulled her away before Julie’s math teacher could decide whether he wanted to punish them or let them off with a warning.

Julie let him lead her away. She didn’t know where they were going, but Luke seemed to have a plan, or maybe his only plan was to escape before detention was an option because he turned a corner, and then another, and stopped when they were in a hallway where there were only a few other people, and none of them were teachers.

“Luke, what...?” she started to ask, but he kissed her again, and swallowed her words.

When he pulled away again, she saw that he was holding a piece of paper in his right hand. It was crumpled in his fist, but she recognized the off-white paper from one of his songbooks and she saw at the very top of it, in her handwriting, the title: Perfect Harmony.

It was the song he had started, the love song about her, and had hidden from her in his math textbook. The one that she had found while snooping through his things and finished and hidden again for him to rediscover. She had completely forgotten about it with everything that happened with Reggie immediately afterward. But now she remembered what he had written, and how it had made her feel, and what she had written in response.

So yeah. She understood why Luke had reacted the way he had. And she was glad that he had, because he could have been embarrassed or annoyed that she had been going through his stuff. And after all, she didn’t really mind that they weren’t completely alone. Who cared if people saw them kissing? It was _Luke_. She _wanted_ people to know how she felt about him; she wanted people to know how _he_ felt about _her._

“Oh. You, um. You found the song,” she said.

He saw that she was looking at the song in his hand and he laughed and leaned his forehead against hers, his arms drawing her closer by the waist. “Yeah, I found it.”

“So, I guess you liked my contribution,” she said with a small, shy smile as she let her hands rest on his shoulders, her fingers playing with the ends of his hair.

“The most insane understatement,” Luke said, and his hands came up to cup her cheeks just like he had after music. “I feel like we already had our conversation and I only just found out about it.”

“I think you’re right,” she said with a small breathless laugh. “You should still ask Alex and Reggie to leave us alone though.”

“Julie, please.” He brushed his grin against hers clumsily. “I already texted Alex a death threat; he’ll keep Reggie out of the studio.” 

“Good,” Julie said, and this time she was the one to kiss him, rising up onto the tips of her toes and curling her arms around the back of his neck.

She loved her boys, but she loved Luke a little differently. And maybe – _definitely_ – it was too early to actually say that, but she knew it was coming, and she suspected he did as well. He had actually written the words, she remembered: _Love me as I am_.

 _I do_ , she wanted to say. _I really, really do_.

Instead, she pulled away slowly, let her hands trail down to link their fingers together again, and whispered, “Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhhhhh!!!! I couldn't wait any longer to post this chapter, the one we've all been waiting for!! I hope it meets your expectations. I know we all needed an upbeat chapter after the last few!   
> Let me know what you think :)


	15. This is your family.

Things were different once Luke and Julie got together, but not in a huge way, and certainly not in a bad way. They still played music, they still hung out with their friends and rehearsed with the boys, Luke still gave Carlos guitar lessons, and they still wrote songs together.

It was just that now their songwriting was a much slower process because they often got distracted and stopped, and ended up lying down instead of sitting on the couch, songbook forgotten. Her dad knew, of course; how could he not? They were so obvious about it that he didn’t even have to _catch_ them kissing to know that they had just had their hands all over each other; their faces said it all.

He was true to his word, though. He didn’t interfere. He let them figure it out on their own terms. The only difference was that Julie wasn’t allowed to spend hours and hours alone in the studio with him at night on the weekends. He didn’t put an end to the late night writing sessions entirely, just made them bring it into the house after dinner so that he could hear them in the background.

It wasn’t like he was standing over them watching while they worked together; mostly he was up in his office as usual. Sometimes, he even went to bed while they were up late in the living room writing. But Luke was too worried about pushing him too far, too aware that her dad was _right there_ and only had to walk to the banister at the top of the stairs to see what they were doing, to get too distracted and carried away like they would in the studio, and Julie suspected that her dad knew that.

He still touched her plenty, still held her hand, brushed her hair aside, let his fingers play at the soft skin of her neck driving her crazy. He still kissed her, but they were soft, gentle, and quick brushes of his lips to hers. He didn’t linger over her mouth, didn’t slip his tongue inside and push her down on the couch and lay his body over hers, or pull her down on top of him the way they both so desperately wanted. His fingers didn’t slip underneath the hem of her shirt to hesitantly brush the warm skin of her abdomen. She didn’t take off his shirt and run her hands over his defined arms and chest like she had wanted to for so long, longer than she realized.

And when they parted for the night, when he kissed her at the back door, long and slow and lingering, and she went up to her room and he went back out to the studio, they would each stand at their windows for a moment, smiling at each other and wishing they didn’t have to be apart at all, even at such a small distance.

Sometimes Reggie would join them when they were writing in the living room; he didn’t seem to mind that Luke and Julie had difficulty keeping their hands off each other. Really, he was probably used to it since the only difference was that they sometimes kissed now. 

Reggie was slowly getting back to playing his bass. It was easy enough for him to play sitting down; it was when he stood up that things got a bit painful, but he was pushing himself more and more every day. He was determined to get back up to speed so that they could play a show by his eighteenth birthday at the end of the month. Never mind that they didn’t have anything booked, or even a name to book under. 

Flynn was still on them for that one, but they weren’t having any luck. Only Reggie was consistently coming up with ideas, each of which was bad, but none anywhere near as bad as some of his first suggestions.

It was a Thursday night and it was almost 10:00. Julie was surprised that her dad hadn’t come downstairs to tell her, Luke, and Reggie to dispel for the night yet. They were expecting him at any moment, so Julie and Luke were taking advantage of the last of their time together, cuddling in the armchair while Reggie lay across from them on the couch suggesting new names. 

“L-A-R-J,” he said enthusiastically. “It’s all of our initials, but we would pronounce it LARGE.” 

Julie and Luke shared an unimpressed glance before Julie sighed. “Well, it’s definitely not your worst idea.”

Reggie frowned at her. “You’re never going to stop bringing up One Girl Three Dudes, are you? I didn’t think of it like that!”

“Dude,” Luke said, then stopped and looked around when he heard the faint sound of someone calling his name. “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah.” Julie frowned and looked towards the kitchen. “Alex?”

He sounded upset, wherever he was. 

“Is he outside?” Reggie said, just as the kitchen door opened and Alex stumbled in crying. 

Julie, already on her feet to see if he was out in the studio, was the first to reach him. He didn’t seem to care which of his friends had him as he wrapped his arms around her tightly, pressed his face to her hair, and sobbed. She was aware of Luke and Reggie on either side of them, but all she could focus on was Alex, who was trying to speak, trying to explain himself, but was utterly incomprehensible. 

“It’s okay, Alex,” she said soothingly, hoping against hope that she wasn’t lying. “It’s going to be okay. We’ve got you. Just breathe.”

He took a deep, stuttering breath, and then another. “My parents,” he sobbed, the first words she could actually make out. “They know.” 

He began to hyperventilate, and Luke and Reggie stepped forward, gently prised him off of Julie, and began to lead him into the living room.

“Come on, dude,” Reggie murmured. “Let’s sit down.” 

Julie paused for a moment to close the back door. When she rushed back into the living room, the boys already had Alex sitting in the armchair she and Luke were just sharing. Reggie was perched on the coffee table in front of him, and Luke was standing behind him with his hands on Alex’s shoulders, making him lean forward with his head between his knees. He was still freaking out, still crying, but Julie could hear his breathing evening out. She sat on the floor by his feet, unsure what to do, but knowing that she had to be there with him. 

Her father, hearing the sudden loud wracking sobs, came hurrying down the stairs and into the living room. “What happened?” He demanded, looking around in alarm as if expecting to see someone hurt or dying in his living room. “Alex? What’s wrong?” 

Julie met Luke’s worried gaze, and she shrugged helplessly. “I… I’m not sure. He said… something about his parents.” 

She was pretty sure her dad knew Alex was gay, but as far as she knew it wasn’t something Alex had outright told him, so she didn’t feel like she could say it. He looked like he understood well enough anyway. He crouched down next to the armchair and placed a hand on Alex’s back. 

“Alex,” he said soothingly. “Alex, it’s okay. Take your time. You’re safe here.” 

The sobs grew louder and more powerful for a minute until gradually he began to calm down. Eventually, he was able to lift his head, but he didn’t meet anyone’s gaze. His hands were moving, picking at each other, fingers crushing each other until Julie slid her hands into his to distract him. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Reggie asked quietly.

Alex sniffled and shrugged, and pulled one of his hands free just long enough to wipe at his eyes before he slid his hand back into Julie’s and held on for dear life. “I was out with… with Willie.” 

His voice broke and Julie saw his eyes flit briefly to her father. Her father must have noticed too because he nodded. “Go on.”

“My parents weren’t home when we got back,” Alex continued shakily. “So I… so he came inside and we were… we were… well, my parents came home and I didn’t hear them… and they came upstairs and they… they saw us.” 

Julie heard Luke’s sharp intake of breath and she shot him a warning look. Now was not the time for his temper to flare up. He frowned at her, but didn’t say anything. 

“What happened, Alex?” her father asked, still in that same soft, soothing voice. 

“They made Willie leave,” Alex whispered. “And then they told me to explain myself. They thought… well, my dad thought I liked _you_.”

Julie smiled sadly when Alex looked at her. She wasn’t surprised; she was very touchy with all of her boys, but it had all started with Alex that very first night before they even played Battle of the Bands. She remembered him squeezing her hand as he got into his father’s car when they parted that night. She understood, if someone didn’t know their relationship or her relationship with Luke, how someone would assume that she had something with Alex. With any of them, really.

“I guess I just never told him any different,” Alex continued. “So, I told them… everything. My mom just cried. But my dad, he was just… blank. And when he looked at me, it was like I was nothing. He told me I had five minutes to pack my stuff and get out of his house.”

Alex started to sob again, and he leaned forward so that Luke’s hands dropped from his shoulders, and he buried his face in his hands. Before Luke could reach out again, reinforce that contact with him, Julie’s dad wrapped his arms around Alex in a warm, if a little awkwardly positioned, hug. 

Alex stiffened for a second, not expecting such a reaction from him, and then he lifted his head only to drop it on Ray’s shoulder. 

“You already have a home here, Alex, you know that, don’t you?” 

His only answer was to sob even louder and clutch at the back of Ray’s shirt. 

“We love you as you are, Alex,” he said. “And this is your family, right here.”

“What’s happening?”

Julie looked up at the sleepy voice from the foot of the stairs; Carlos was standing there in a pair of blue pajamas that were about an inch too short for him. He was rubbing his eyes and it struck Julie just how young and innocent her little brother was. He was so smart that sometimes she forgot he was only eight years old. How was she supposed to tell him that there were people out there who could turn their love for their children on and off, who would turn their backs on their only son just because he didn’t like the kind of people they thought he should?

“Nothing,” Julie said gently. “Go back to bed.”

“No, I wanna know what’s going on,” Carlos insisted.

“Julie, take your brother upstairs, please,” her dad said quietly.

Julie frowned at being the only one sent away, but did as her father asked. She kissed the side of Alex’s head, then slowly stood and made her way to the stairs.

“Actually, boys, will you just give me a moment with Alex?” her dad said as Julie grabbed Carlos’s hand and began to pull him up the stairs. They hesitated, and her dad gestured for them to go upstairs. “You can go with Julie.”

It was a testament to how much they loved and trusted her dad that Luke and Reggie got up and, after squeezing Alex’s shoulders, followed Julie up the stairs without protest.

“What is going on?” Carlos demanded, arms crossed belligerently over his chest as he stopped in his doorway.

“Just go to bed, Carlos,” Julie pleaded, but she knew when she saw the way his bottom lip stuck out stubbornly that he wasn’t going to leave her alone.

“If you don’t tell me, I’m gonna tell Dad that you and Luke made out in your bed the other day.”

Luke made a choking noise behind her and it sounded suspiciously like Reggie snorted. She grabbed Carlos’s shoulders roughly and dragged him into his dark bedroom. When she shoved him down onto his bed, she could just see in the light filtering in from the hall the way he glared defiantly up at her.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” she hissed. “And how do you even know about that?”

“Dad left to go to that meeting, but _I_ was still here,” Carlos said. “You guys just forgot about me.”

He was right; they had completely forgotten that Carlos was home when she had brought Luke up to her room last Sunday afternoon. She just got tired, sometimes, of always making out on a couch. It was nice to have some room to move around. It was also the first time that she had taken Luke’s shirt off and been able to run her hands all over his chest. Her face went red just thinking about it.

“Move over,” she said tiredly, and sat next to him when he complied. She saw Luke and Reggie hovering uncertainly in the doorway and she sighed and looked back at Carlos. “You know how Papi is just… a really, really good dad? And you know how there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that we could ever do that would make him not love us?”

Carlos shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Well,” Julie paused, trying to choose her words carefully. “Well, not all parents are like that.”

Carlos looked at Reggie for a few seconds, and then he looked back at Julie. He no longer looked stubborn; he looked like he was beginning to grasp how serious the situation was. “Yeah, I know. We’re really lucky.”

“Yeah, we are,” she said softly, and smoothed his messy hair over his forehead. “But Alex isn’t.”

“His parents were mean to him, too?” Carlos asked sadly, and he looked at Reggie again.

“Yeah, little dude,” Reggie said evenly, still leaning against the doorframe next to Luke. “Alex’s parents were mean to him, too. Not just like mine… but his parents said some _really_ bad things to him.”

“Is Dad going to take care of him, too?” Carlos asked. “Just like he takes care of all of us?”

“Yeah, buddy.” Luke was the one to answer him. “He’s going to take care of Alex, too.”

“So, I have _three_ big brothers now?” Carlos said. Reggie smiled at him with an appreciative nod, and Luke looked pleasantly surprised.

Julie laughed and hugged her little brother. “Yeah, I guess you kinda do. Is that okay?”

She realized that in all this, each time her dad had taken in one of the boys, he had explicitly asked her if she was comfortable with it and she wasn’t sure if he had extended the same courtesy to Carlos. He clearly loved Reggie, and he practically idolized Luke now that he was getting guitar lessons from him, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he was always happy that there were suddenly so many other people living in the house.

“Duh!” he said, and rolled his eyes.

“ _Te amo nene_ ,” Julie smiled at him and stood up. “ _Now_ will you go back to sleep?”

“Love you too,” he whispered and lay down as she walked to the door.

Luke and Reggie stepped aside as she approached.

“Oh! Luke,” Carlos said. Julie paused with her hand on the doorknob as Luke came up behind her and popped his head back around the doorframe to look in. “I wouldn’t really have told Papi about you guys in the bed.”

Luke groaned quietly when Reggie laughed behind him.

“Stop _talking about it_ , Carlos!” Julie whispered heatedly, and shut the door.

She turned around and pressed her forehead to Luke’s chest. He wrapped his arms around her.

“Don’t let me kill him,” she whispered; she could hear Carlos laughing quietly to himself through the closed door.

“Come on,” he murmured in her ear, and led her into her bedroom.

Reggie was already lying across the width of the made up bed when they walked in. “Nice room, Jules.”

“Thanks,” Julie said slowly.

“Dude, move!” Luke said, shoving lightly at Reggie’s legs so that he and Julie could sit against the pillows.

“Wait, you guys didn’t…” Reggie trailed off, his face scrunching up in disgust as he gestured between them and then down to the mattress.

“No!” Julie’s answer was quick, sharp, and humiliated. It may have crossed her mind once or twice, but she was a reasonable enough person. She knew she was only sixteen years old and, despite how well they knew each other, they had only been together for a few weeks.

“Dude, come on!” Luke complained. Julie suspected that if Reggie weren’t still healing from his wounds, he would have violently kicked him off the bed. As it was, he only gave his thigh a simple nudge with his bare foot.

“Okay, okay! Sorry!” Reggie said, pouting up at Julie. “Tell Luke to go easy on me.”

“Isn’t he already?” Julie asked.

“Yes,” Luke said with a small glare at Reggie.

They were quiet for a minute, and then Julie sighed sadly. “Do you guys think Alex is okay?”

“Honestly? Right now? No,” Luke mumbled, sliding his arm behind her. She snuggled into his side and pressed her forehead to the side of his neck. “But he will be. Your dad will see to it.”

“Yeah,” Reggie agreed emphatically. “Your dad and I had so many heart-to-hearts when I first moved here that it wasn’t even a week before I realized that _this_ is my family.”

“Yeah,” Julie agreed softly. “He is pretty great.”

It wasn’t often that she was able to sit in silence anymore. Really ever since Luke had moved into the studio and Reggie and Alex had been around more often than not, she couldn’t recall a time there wasn’t some kind of music playing or conversation going on. But now, tonight, neither she nor Luke nor Reggie seemed to be able to find much to talk about.

So, they sat in relative silence and waited for her dad or Alex to come upstairs. They could hear her dad’s low, soothing murmur, but could make out no words. Occasionally, they would hear Alex’s voice, panicky and broken still, as he responded.

Julie grew very sleepy, and she worried about how she was going to get through school tomorrow, but she couldn’t sleep. Not now. Not when Alex was downstairs going through the worst night of his life, and not when she was crammed between Luke and Reggie, who had moved his head to the pillows next to her, on her double bed.

It was almost midnight when they appeared in the doorway. Alex’s eyes were red and his face was puffy and swollen, but he wasn’t crying anymore when his friends all vaulted off the bed and rushed to his side. Luke got there first and, without saying anything –really, what could he say to make anything better? – pulled him into a hug. Instead of waiting their turn, Julie and Reggie squeezed in, throwing their arms around both of them.

“Alex is going to stay here with us,” her dad said quietly.

“Of course he is,” Julie said confidently, giving her boys a little extra squeeze. “We’re his family.”

Her dad smiled at her and nodded as they all parted, but they didn’t move far from Alex’s side.

“I’ll just leave the four of you to decide where you want to sleep tonight. I’m sure you’ll all be happier together.” He paused and looked at Luke and Julie. “ _Just tonight_.”

“Yes, sir,” Luke mumbled, not quite meeting his gaze. Julie knew he was probably thinking about Carlos’s empty threat again.

“Thank you, Papi,” Julie said.

“Thank you, sir,” Alex said, and his voice was gruff from all the crying he had done, and incredibly sincere.

Julie’s dad looked at Alex, and he stepped forward and gave Alex another warm hug. “You don’t have anything to thank me for. This is what family does.”

And then he left, begging them to at least try to get _some_ sleep.

Though Julie had been crammed in the bed between Reggie and Luke before, they somehow managed to all four fit into her bed together. Julie was once again squished between two boys – Luke and Alex this time – with Reggie on Alex’s other side. It was uncomfortable, and they barely got any sleep because of it, but they were all together and Julie wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeeeyyyyyy there. So, as usual, sorry for the wait.   
> This one isn't my favorite chapter, and I'm really sorry to have to do this to Alex, but it's like y'all already called a few chapters ago; Ray was going to have to have all his kids under his roof at some point!   
> Let me know what you think.


End file.
